LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


GIFT  OF 


Accession 1.04115 Class  a.gLJ 


The  Things  That  Abide 


The  Things  That  Abide 


By 
Orrin  Leslie  Elliott 


San  Francisco 

The  Murdock  Press 

i  903 


COPYRIGHT,  1903 

RY 
ORRIN  LESLIE  EI.I.IOTT 


Prefatory 


The  reconstruction  of  religious  belief 
consequent  upon  the  extraordinary  critical 
and  scientific  achievements  of  the  nine- 
teenth century  is  now  measurably  complete. 
If  in  this  process  there  seemed  at  first  only 
losses,  it  is  now  evident  how  little  the  things 
fundamental  to  religion  and  the  good  life 
have  been  disturbed.  The  losses  have  been 
really  gains,  in  that  they  have  served  to 
emphasize  and  deepen  the  truths  that  abide. 
Yet  the  old  order  has  yielded  but  slowly,  or 
else,  and  more  particularly  in  our  roving, 
cosmopolitan  West,  with  a  flood-tide  which 
has  carried  the  younger  generation  quite 
over  into  paganism.  The  sudden  intel- 
lectual awakening  which  the  university 
brings  intensifies  the  perils  and  distresses 
of  transition.  To  college  students  problems 
of  religious  belief  and  life  are  either  fresh, 


104115 


4  Prefatory 

insistent,  and  disturbing,  or  they  are 
brushed  aside  as  obsolete.  The  discourses 
here  brought  together  have  sought  to  ap- 
proach these  problems  with  the  frankest 
recognition  of  what  science  and  criticism 
have  accomplished,  yet  always  with  the 
endeavor  to  emphasize  the  abiding  realities 
of  the  spiritual  life. 

It  is  proper  to  add  that  these  discourses 
were  not  worked  out  in  any  connected  or 
progressive  series.  They  have  been  given 
in  desultory  fashion,  at  considerable  inter- 
vals of  time,  and  to  shifting  university 
audiences.  In  bringing  them  together  it 
has  seemed  best  to  allow  repetitions  both 
of  thought  and  of  language,  to  remain 
substantially  as  in  the  original  delivery. 

0.  L.  ELLIOTT. 

Stanford  University,  California, 
January  1,  1903. 


Contents 


I.    THE  THINGS  THAT  ABIDE 9 

II.  CONFESSION  BEFORE  MEN      ....    33 

III.  GREATER  AND  LESSER  MIRACLES      .    .    57 

IV.    TEMPTED  OF  GOD 79 

V.   LIFE  WORTH  LIVING 99 

VI.  THE  CHRISTIAN  ARGUMENT    ....  121 

VII.    "As  LITTLE  CHILDREN" 143 

VIII.    "LIKE  AS  A  FATHER" 157 

IX.  THE  LIFE  ETERNAL  .                          .  171 


The  Things  That  Abide 


The  Things  That  Abide 

' '  And  now  abideth  faith,  hope,  love  —  these 
three. ' ' 

IN  the  Life  of  Tennyson  it  is  told  how 
"one  day  the  poet  went  off  by  himself 
to  see  an  old  laborer  of  ninety,  and  came 
back  saying,  '  He  tells  me  that  he  is  waiting 
for  death  and  is  quite  ready.  What  a  sin 
it  would  be  if  anyone  were  to  disturb  that 
old  man's  faith!'  " 

A  strange  reflection  surely!  Here  was 
contented  old  age — the  fruition  of  a  life  of 
toil  and  hardship,  but  lived  sincerely,  in 
kindly  relations  with  fellow  man,  and  sus- 
tained by  an  unfaltering  trust  in  the 
Eternal  Goodness.  How  could  such  a  faith 
be  disturbed?  Did  Tennyson  fear  lest  the 
patience  and  charity  of  this  good  man  be 
dissipated,  lest  his  honesty  and  uprightness 
be  undermined?  that  there  might  come  to 
him  the  temptation  to  do  a  mean  and  base 
act,  and  that  suddenly,  in  his  ninetieth 
year,  the  whole  fabric  of  character  built  up 
through  the  long  discipline  of  pain  and 


10        The  Things  That  Abide 

struggle  and  patient  continuance  in  well- 
doing might  topple  to  the  ground,  an 
unmitigable  ruin?  This  was  not  Tenny- 
son 's  thought.  Nor  was  it  this  other :  The 
faith  of  this  old  man  is  vain,  his  God  is  a 
creation  of  his  own  fancy,  what  he  believes 
is  not  true;  but  because  it  means  much  to 
him,  because  he  is  happy  in  his  delusion, 
because  his  day  is  done,  it  would  be  a  shame 
to  let  the  rough  truth  break  in  upon  his 
peaceful  repose.  It  was  not  that  thought. 
There  is  no  doubt  about  the  final  note  of 
Tennyson's  song.  He  was  not  thinking  of 
anything  that  would  touch  one  real  fact  in 
that  old  man's  life.  He  was  thinking  of 
the  surging  doubt  so  characteristic  of  his 
time,  the  resistless  beating  of  the  waves 
which  had  wrested  from  their  moorings 
so  many  peaceful  craft.  He  himself  had 
faced  that  storm.  He  thought  of  the  haunt- 
ing uncertainty,  the  blackness  of  despair, 
the  confusion  of  all  the  new  words  and  new 
voices  that  fill  the  world,  and  the  long  hard 
fight  by  which  faith  is  won  back.  Of  all 
this  fierce  battle  over  documents  and  evi- 
dences, of  all  the  recasting  of  intellectual 
beliefs  forced  upon  an  unwilling  theology, 
not  one  echo  had  reached  this  old  laborer. 
For  him  there  would  not  be  time  to  find 


The  Things  That  Abide        11 

a  way  through  all  this  maze.  Life  and  his 
philosophy  of  it,  the  growth  in  grace  and 
the  intellectual  conceptions  which  underlay 
it,  would  seem  inseparable.  In  the  result- 
ing shock  the  permanent  realities  upon 
which  his  life  had  been  founded  and  which 
he  vocalized  in  that  vivid  realization  of  the 
Good  Father  and  his  love  and  care,  might 
somehow  be  swept  away. 

For  Tennyson's  laborer  this  seclusion 
was  fitting;  for  us  there  can  be  no  such 
happy  isolation.  There  is  not  a  single 
intellectual  movement  of  our  age  that  does 
not  converge,  sooner  or  later,  at  this  point 
of  the  reality  back  of  time  and  space  and 
phenomena.  There  is  no  doubt  that  his- 
torical criticism  has  profoundly  modified 
men's  notions  regarding  the  Bible  narra- 
tive and  the  whole  dogmatic  structure  of 
historic  Christianity.  There  is  no  doubt 
that  physics  and  biology  have  raised  ques- 
tions about  the  unseen  world  which  are 
hard  to  answer.  There  is  no  doubt  that 
great  unknown  regions  hitherto  appropri- 
ated by  Religion,  and  over  which  she  had 
thrown  the  mantle  of  that  inscrutable 
phrase  "the  mystery  of  God,"  have  been 
explored  by  physicist  and  biologist  and 
the  mystery  rolled  back.  New  and  start- 


12        The  Things  That  Abide 

ling  questions  have  been  pushed  to  the 
front.  How  much  has  the  plain  word  of 
Scripture  been  overlaid  by  the  subtleties 
of  metaphysical  speculation?  How  much 
in  the  plain  word  of  Scripture  itself  is 
historically  true?  What  accredits  the  as- 
serted communications  of  the  Almighty? 
Is  there  a  God  other  than  the  play  of 
energy  and  the  unfolding  of  life  which 
physics  and  biology  make  known  ?  Is  there 
a  standard  of  right  and  wrong  other  than 
the  surviving  conventions  of  the  race? 
Cannot  life  be  finally  cornered  in  ganglion 
cells,  and  when  the  brain  is  dead  must 
not  the  individual  life  go  out  forever? 

God  came  to  most  of  us  out  of  a  Book, 
out  of  a  creed,  out  of  Milton's  Paradise 
Lost,  out  of  a  defining  process.  The  Book, 
the  creed,  the  church  spoke  an  inerrant 
message  of  authority.  They  told  all  the 
story  of  God  and  man,  the  glory  of  crea- 
tion, the  disobedience,  the  Fall,  the  just 
wrath  of  offended  Deity,  the  doom  of 
humankind,  the  marvelous  Plan  of  Salva- 
tion through  the  interposition  of  the  Son 
of  God.  Oriental  imagery  everywhere  took 
on  the  garb  of  occidental  legalism.  We 
could  not  weigh  or  question.  Whatever 
Book  or  Church  said  might  be  elucidated, 


The  Things  That  Abide        13 

accounted  for,  shown  to  be  rational,  just, 
beneficent,  by  appeal  to  reason,  by  analogy 
to  nature,  by  interpreting  experience.  But 
nothing  could  be  hinted  at  as  mistaken  or 
untrue.  We  could  explain,  but  not  chal- 
lenge. Has  God  spoken  to  man?  Bring 
together  all  Scriptural  "Thus-saith-the- 
Lord's."  Has  he  interfered  in  the  affairs 
of  men?  What  saith  the  Scripture  narra- 
tive? And  all  that  the  Bible  story  tells 
of  him  who  "worketh  all  things  after  the 
counsel  of  his  own  will"  is  right  and 
proper — even  though  it  be  the  drowning 
of  the  human  race,  or  the  hardening  of 
Pharaoh's  heart,  or  the  slaughter  of  little 
children,  or  the  stirring  up  of  the  Assyrian 
Kings  to  enslave  Israel,  or  the  putting  of  a 
lying  spirit  in  the  mouth  of  Ahab's  proph- 
ets. "Therefore  hath  he  mercy  on  whom 
he  will  have  mercy,  and  whom  he  will  he 
hardeneth. ' ' 

By  recognizing  an  ultimate  authority  in 
terms  of  human  documents  or  institutions 
religion  became  an  exact  science,  and  its 
practice  arbitrary  and  unquestioning  con- 
formity. And  this  unimpeachable  author- 
ity it  is  that  historic  Christianity  so  long 
put  in  the  forefront  of  its  battle  line.  The 
distinction  between  "Christian"  and  "in- 


14        The  Things  That  Abide 

fidel"  was  thus  made  sharp  and  clear. 
Honesty,  sincerity,  purity, — these  were 
indeed  Christian  virtues,  but  in  themselves 
they  did  not  bring  their  possessor  one  whit 
nearer  the  Kingdom  of  God.  Instead  of 
adorning  the  character  of  the  "uncon- 
verted" they  only  made  error  more  dan- 
gerous and  damnable.  The  Christian 
propagandist  came  as  one  dealing  with 
absolute  truth  regarding  man's  lost  estate 
and  the  expiatory  decrees  of  Heaven.  The 
sinner  must  take  into  his  system  an  ab- 
stract philosophy  and  then  experience  its 
prescribed  metaphysical  and  psychological 
effects.  This  process  was  incited  and 
brought  to  its  conclusion  not  without  acute 
psychological  penetration;  and  Christian 
living  and  the  highest  type  of  Christian 
character  came  out  of  the  consecration  of 
the  will  and  the  faculties  to  the  lofty  ideals 
of  the  New  Testament.  But  that  which 
seemed  so  important  was  the  psychological 
experience  and  the  intellectual  assent. 
Only  two  classes  of  persons  were  conceived 
of.  There  were  those  who  confessed  their 
sins,  experienced  forgiveness,  and  were  re- 
ceived into  the  visible  fold  of  the  Kingdom. 
There  were  the  outsiders,  unregenerate, 
continuing  in  their  sins,  and  putting  off  to 


The  Things  That  Abide        15 

a  more  convenient  season  the  disagreeable 
but  generally  anticipated  duty  of  getting 
a  final  adjustment  with  Heaven  through  its 
accredited  representatives. 

This  highly  refined  metaphysical  Chris- 
tianity stimulated  a  not  less  intellectually 
acute  skepticism  which  challenged  its  logic, 
and  pointed  out  the  a  priori  improbability 
of  its  premises,  the  lack  of  proof,  the  im- 
morality of  acts  sanctioned  by  documents 
and  institutions,  the  absence  of  miracle 
from  the  modern  world,  the  injustice  of  the 
prearranged  hell,  the  tastelessness  of  the 
prearranged  heaven.  We  should  not  under- 
estimate the  bearing  of  this  battle  upon 
the  fortunes  of  the  world,  nor  the  service 
rendered  to  mankind  by  this  vigorous  re- 
assertion  of  the  primacy  of  the  human 
reason.  Yet  it  was  characteristic  of  the 
old  skepticism  that  it  did  not  work  in  a 
creative  mold.  It  did  not  offer  a  more 
adequate  explanation  of  the  world;  it  left 
the  world 's  moral  leadership  where  it  found 
it. 

But  even  while  the  controversy  raged 
unabated,  the  tides  of  human  interest  began 
to  recede,  until  at  last,  in  our  own  day,  we 
have  seen  the  old  theology  and  the  old 
skepticism  hopelessly  stranded.  There 


16        The  Things  That  Abide 

came  into  being,  not  as  a  criticism  of  the- 
ology, but  as  an  emergence  of  a  larger  and 
healthier  interest  in  the  material  world,  a 
patient,  independent,  untrammeled,  absorb- 
ing study  of  the  world's  history.  The 
center  of  intellectual  interest  shifted  from 
the  systematizing  of  what  men  must  take 
upon  authority  to  the  search  for  what  they 
could  find  out  for  themselves.  In  the  rocks, 
in  river  beds,  in  fossils,  in  all  living  or- 
ganisms from  simplest  to  complex,  in  cus- 
toms, habits,  and  laws,  was  spelled  out  the 
story  and  the  meaning  of  the  world.  Of  the 
tremendous  structure  reared  by  modern 
science  it  is  not  necessary  here  to  speak. 
Revolutionary  in  the  domain  of  its  own 
subject-matter,  the  spirit  it  typifies  and  the 
method  it  illustrates  have  become  revolu- 
tionary in  every  domain  of  thought. 

This  atmosphere  of  earnest  inquiry  has 
finally  brought  a  pleasant  truce  to  almost 
all  that  was  strained  and  shrill  in  the  old 
religious  controversies.  The  quiet,  dissolv- 
ing force  of  the  genuine  spirit  of  modern 
research  has  been  wholly  soothing.  The 
tone  and  the  temper  in  which  the  old 
dogmatic  metaphysics  flourished  has  passed 
out  of  the  intellectual  life  forever.  Every- 
where the  advance-guard  of  theological 


The  Things  That  Abide        17 

thinkers  has  occupied  new  positions,  and 
thither  the  whole  army  is  tending.  First 
of  all,  there  has  been  brought  about  a 
candid  re-examination  of  documents  and 
institutions  in  the  light  of  historical  re- 
search and  criticism.  Little  by  little  there 
has  been  a  loosening  of  frozen  creed.  A 
grim,  petrified  Book  has  been  resolved  into 
its  original  elements  of  history  and  poetry, 
of  prophecy  and  song.  Believers  and 
doubters  have  forgotten  their  differences 
in  an  absorbing  inquiry  into  the  meaning 
of  its  historic  unfolding,  its  heights  and 
depths,  its  passionate  search  for  and  reli- 
ance upon  the  God  of  Righteousness.  The 
fundamental  questions  of  God,  and  duty, 
and  destiny  have  been  considered  anew  in 
the  light  of  psychology  and  biology  and 
sociology  and  all  that  has  to  do  with  the 
associative  life  of  man. 

And  yet  all  this  has  not  been  accom- 
plished without  a  profound  disturbance  of 
the  religious  life.  This  modern  attitude  is 
so  new,  so  revolutionary,  that  it  is  apt  to 
fall  upon  the  youth  brought  suddenly  into 
its  full  blaze  with  tragic  effect.  The  light 
is  not  tempered  to  our  blinded  eyes,  and  we 
see  men  as  trees  walking.  One  by  one  the  old 
supports  are  cut  away.  With  the  crumbling 


18        The  Things  That  Abide 

of  dogmatic  structures,  all  the  certainty 
seems  to  go  out  of  the  religious 
life.  The  God  which  tradition  and  author- 
ity had  imbedded  in  our  intellectual  con- 
sciousness grows  dim  and  dimmer  until 
some  day  we  awake  to  the  startling  realiza- 
tion that  he  has  vanished  away.  The  intel- 
lect had  postulated  a  God  as  the  ground 
and  order  of  cosmic  unity,  but  the  intellect 
finally  fails  to  realize  him.  The  appalling 
silence  of  the  centuries  is  too  much  for 
mere  intellect.  We  spell  out  the  history 
of  a  world  until  it  seems  complete  and  all 
accounted  for  and  discover  no  force  other 
than  the  all-encompassing  energy,  no  life 
that  is  not  finally  shut  up  in  a  ganglion 
cell.  Yet  religion  has  somehow  stood  for 
the  best  things  and  determined  the  moral 
leadership  of  the  world.  And  so  we  find 
men  clinging  to  the  old  formulations  for 
their  allegorical  truth  and  their  suggestive 
symbolism,  and  trying  to  hold  on  to  what 
is  best  in  life 's  ideals,  to  join  with  churches 
in  their  practical  endeavors  for  the  better- 
ment of  men,  and  to  bear  with  the  hallu- 
cinations of  the  religious  mind  for  the  sake 
of  the  good  citizenship  which  they  accom- 
pany. But  when  it  comes  to  that  which 
the  churches  put  behind  all  this — the  God 


The  Things  That  Abide        19 

about  whom  they  talk  familiarly,  his  pur- 
poses, man's  dependence  upon  him,  his  love 
and  care — they  will  let  it  pass  as  a  bold  and 
dizzy  use  of  metaphor  which  the  man  of 
research,  who  knows  what  evidence  is,  will 
prudently  abstain  from.  And  though  not 
much  will  be  said  about  it.  the  scientist 
often  understands  the  religionist  to  be  deal- 
ing in  a  method  and  a  kind  of  evidence 
which  have  been  discredited  and  discarded 
in  every  realm  of  intellectual  life. 

These  negative  and  materialistic  results 
of  evolutionary  science  are  not  uncontested. 
Indeed,  no  phenomenon  of  our  own  time  is 
more  marked  than  the  impetus  given  to 
theology  by  its  response  to  the  searching 
test  of  the  scientific  spirit.  This  new  spirit 
in  theology,  not  antagonistic  to  scientific 
truth,  yet  undaunted  by  it,  essays  without 
fear  the  reconstruction  of  religious  belief. 
But  however  confidently  we  may  look  to  the 
final  result  life  fares  on.  Religion  cannot 
wait.  Unless  religion  can  make  its  direct 
appeal  and  present  its  direct  evidence  to 
the  human  heart  it  cannot  be  a  moving 
power  in  the  lives  of  men.  Theology  and 
religious  belief  are  concerned  with  histori- 
cal data  and  with  the  intellectual  inter- 
pretation of  fact  and  experience.  Religion 


20        The  Things  That  Abide 

touches  the  springs  of  conduct,  and  in  the 
flowering  of  the  spiritual  life  we  find  the 
measure  of  its  reality  and  value.  And  so, 
when  the  brain  is  weary  with  the  task  of 
finding  out  what  is  saved  and  what  is  lost 
in  these  intellectual  upheavals  and  logical 
reconstructions,  we  may  turn  to  the  things 
men  live  by,  to  the  homes  and  hearts  where 
the  Christ  life  is  emulated.  Aspiration, 
anticipation — are  not  these  the  characteris- 
tic moods  of  our  age?  Uprightness,  sin- 
cerity, purity,  tenderness,  helpfulness — 
are  not  these  its  characteristic  ideals? 
Faith,  hope,  love — these  are  imperishable 
realities,  the  gift  of  Christianity  to  a  world 
ready  to  die.  These  link  man  to  whatever 
is  eternal  and  beyond.  These  bridge  the 
chasm  between  known  and  unknown. 
These  do  not  tell  what  God  is,  how  he  looks, 
what  is  his  speech;  but  they  hint  of  like- 
ness, they  lead  out  into  the  infinite.  Be- 
lieving life  cannot  come  out  of  syllogisms — 
only  out  of  the  living  experience.  Other 
men  have  agonized  and  prayed  and  come 
to  themselves  and  seen  life  in  its  long 
reaches;  they  have  stated  and  defined  and 
pointed  out.  Have  we  not  read  their  state- 
ments ?  Do  we  not  know  the  end  from  the 
beginning?  How  close  the  horizon  line 


The  Things  That  Abide        21 

seems !  How  far  it  will  stretch  if  we  really 
go  forth  into  the  world.  Reasoned  state- 
ments are  valuable,  and  they  may  point 
us  rightly  on  the  way ;  but  they  are  not  the 
way.  Life  has  something  better  for  each 
of  us  than  a  mechanical  outfit  even  of  com- 
pletest  truth.  We  have  been  given  the 
chance  to  grow,  to  attain.  To  start  with  a 
reasoned  cosmogony,  with  a  self-assured 
metaphysics,  and  not  aware  of  its  limita- 
tions and  contradictions — how  small  an 
equipment  that  would  be  at  its  best ;  what  a 
meaningless  revelation  of  God  in  compari- 
son with  that  sight  of  the  invisible  which 
bursts  upon  us  from  the  summits  of  human 
experience!  The  ''will  of  God"  can  mean 
nothing  to  one  who  has  not  felt  the  travail 
of  life.  The  terms  of  philosophy,  of  sci- 
ence, of  theology,  are  mere  terms  until 
meaning  has  been  worked  into  them  out  of 
the  abundance  of  human  living. 

If  some  one  in  whom  you  repose  confi- 
dence shall  say  to  you:  This  is  an  oracle 
of  God,  this  is  a  divine  message,  listen  to 
it  and  obey  it  and  it  will  bring  you  life — 
you  may  listen  and  obey,  and  if  it  be  an 
oracle  of  God  and  a  divine  message,  the 
life  will  come.  In  some  such  fashion  the 
message  of  Jesus  has  come  into  the  lives  of 


22        The  Things  That  Abide 

multitudes  of  men  and  women.  They  have 
taken  the  dictum  of  prophet  or  priest  and 
faithfully  tried  to  live  it.  And  though  we 
boast  much  of  original  investigation  this  is 
what  we  individually  must  do  in  a  thou- 
sand relations  of  life.  We  cannot  get 
firsthand  knowledge  for  ourselves,  and  we 
can  and  do  trust  those  who  are  equipped 
for  this  particular  task.  Only  we  insist, 
in  religion  as  elsewhere,  that  the  path  of 
investigation  be  not  blocked.  There  must 
always  remain  the  open  road  to  verification, 
to  the  removal  of  incrustations,  to  the 
achievement  of  more  accurate  results.  But 
when  all  is  done  it  remains  true  that  the 
testing  of  life  is  the  great  and  final  proof. 
Intellectual  processes  can  correct  experi- 
ence, they  can  give  perspective  and  propor- 
tion, but  they  can  never  contradict  the 
truth  we  have  learned  by  becoming  it. 

Does  not  a  mother  of  insight  know  more 
of  the  nature  and  development  of  the  child 
than  any  student  can  find  out?  Have  not 
the  mothers  of  the  world  reached  finer 
results  than  any  modern  investigator  not 
armed  with  mother  love  ?  And  yet  the  in- 
vestigator will  proceed  as  if  the  mothers 
had  never  found  out  anything.  He  goes 
about  his  task  as  if  no  person  had  ever 


The  Things  That  Abide        23 

observed  a  child  before.  He  observes,  he 
sifts,  he  verifies,  and  finally  accumulates  a 
succession  of  facts  from  which,  with  many 
qualifications,  he  draws  conclusions.  Many 
of  these  conclusions  are  what  the  mothers 
found  out  long  ago;  they  could  have  told 
him  at  the  start.  But  it  does  not  therefore 
follow  that  his  labor  has  been  in  vain. 
Although  many  of  the  mother 's  conclusions 
have  been  verified,  some  have  been  dis- 
credited. All  conclusions  have  been  tested. 
The  observations  of  wise  mothers  have  been 
separated  from  those  of  less  wise  and  less 
discriminating  mothers.  There  is  now 
some  solid  structure  upon  which  to  build. 

Yet  in  the  end  the  psychologist  must  take 
the  garnered  experiences  of  motherhood 
as  the  choicest  material  of  his  study.  And 
in  considering  the  deepest  experiences  of 
childhood  the  insight  of  the  mother  is  surer 
than  the  labored  reasoning  of  the  most 
painstaking  investigator.  It  goes  deeper 
than  the  reasoner  can  ever  go.  In  religion, 
the  flashing  insight  of  the  prophet,  the 
moral  penetration  of  a  Jesus  of  Nazareth, 
illumines  the  unknown  as  the  lamp  of  pa- 
tient, stolid  investigation  can  never  do. 
Investigation  is  the  great  corrector.  It 
sifts.  It  enables  us  to  separate  the  wheat 


24        The  Things  That  Abide 

from  the  chaff.  Without  it  we  shall  as  soon 
bow  the  knee  to  Baal  as  to  God.  But  the 
supreme  insight  into  truth  remains  with 
the  prophet. 

We  do  not  assert  the  principle  of  the 
lever  on  the  authority  of  Archimedes.  He 
is  to  be  honored  as  discoverer:  we  can 
verify  the  principle  for  ourselves.  So  we 
may  honor  St.  Chrysostom  and  St.  Augus- 
tine and  the  Nicene  Council  in  so  far  as 
their  wisdom  justifies  it.  But  we  cannot 
settle  some  difficulty  of  our  own  by  appeal- 
ing to  what  they  said.  The  beauty  of  a 
pure  life  never  fades.  Its  freshness  is 
perennial.  It  will  never  lose  its  power. 
That  is  because  it  is  the  law  of  the  pure 
life,  its  nature,  just  as  it  is  the  nature  of 
the  breeze  that  comes  over  yonder  moun- 
tain. 

If  St.  Chrysostom  spoke  the  deep,  abso- 
lute truth  it  can  be  verified  in  our  own 
experience.  But  we  cannot  otherwise  take 
it  just  because  he  said  it.  John  Calvin 
could  see  and  transfix  a  thought  of  God 
which  shall  remain  with  us  forever.  But 
when  he  came  to  build  fences  to  hedge  us 
around  he  could  use  only  the  material  his 
age  afforded,  and  poor,  perishable  material 
it  proved. 


The  Things  That  Abide        25 

Nor  in  Scripture  can  we  be  taken  captive 
just  by  a  rhetorical  figure.  A  Scriptural 
"Thus  saith  the  Lord"  is  authoritative  if 
it  works  out  divinely  in  human  living — not 
because  of  the  formula  in  which  it  is  cast. 
There  is  a  transient  speech  and  there  is  a 
universal  speech.  Shakespeare  lives  be- 
cause he  spoke  the  universal  language  of 
mankind.  It  rings  true  in  every  age.  It 
brings  its  message  of  power  and  insight  to 
every  generation.  If  God  has  spoken  to 
man  in  a  peculiar  and  authoritative  way, 
and  if  our  Christian  Scriptures  reflect  these 
personal  communications,  how  shall  we  find 
out  this  fact?  Not  by  looking  for  a  Thus- 
saith-the-Lord  tag,  not  by  yielding  our 
opinion  to  that  of  some  scribe.  If  here 
are  the  divinest  thoughts  on  record  they 
will  work  out  most  divinely  in  human 
history. 

And  so,  what  Jesus  says  is  no  better  than 
what  any  other  teacher  says — unless  it  is 
better!  Is  Christianity  really  unwilling  to 
meet  this  test?  Authority  has  done  some- 
thing, the  thumb-screw  has  done  something, 
blind  obedience  has  done  something;  but  if 
Christianity  had  not  met  this  other  test  it 
would  not  have  lasted  half-way  down  to  the 
twentieth  century.  Those  who  stood  near 


26        The  Things  That  Abide 

to  Jesus  had  their  hearts  and  lives  touched 
in  a  way  that  seldom  stirs  within  our  slug- 
gish blood;  and  so  they  were  keyed  to 
tremendous  effort  and  devotion.  Yet  we 
can  speak  more  confidently  than  they  of  the 
reality  .and  worth  of  his  message:  the 
centuries  of  testing  have  not  gone  for 
naught.  The  true  apostolic  succession  is 
the  succession  of  human  lives  touched  by 
faith  and  hope  and  love — keeping  green  the 
tree  of  divine  promise,  widening  out  the 
moral  life  of  the  world. 

But  some  of  you  will  ask  as  the  days  go 
by,  May  we  not  still  keep  these  abiding 
things,  and  yet  see  in  that  which  is  about 
us  only  the  manifestation  of  eternal  energy, 
unknowable  power  ?  Can  we  not  trace  back 
step  by  step  every  rock  and  tree  and  run- 
ning stream,  and  the  mind  of  man  himself, 
almost  or  quite  to  the  primal  nebulae,  the 
world-stuff  from  which  everything  is 
evolved,  and  see  no  God  and  Father,  and 
no  human  mind  apart  from  the  bone  and 
fibre  which  it  inhabits?  And  if,  with  Mr. 
Huxley,  we  ' '  cannot  see  one  shadow  or  tittle 
of  evidence  that  the  great  unknown  under- 
lying the  phenomena  of  the  universe  stands 
to  us  in  the  relation  of  a  Father — loves  us 
and  cares  for  us  as  Christianity  asserts," 


The  Things  That  Abide        27 

shall  we  not  frankly  face  the  fact  at  what- 
ever cost?  Yes,  yes;  let  us  not  have  any 
make-believe  here.  And  may  we  not  as 
frankly  recognize  the  delights  of  paganism, 
the  serene  and  peaceful  flow  of  days  when 
the  long  tension  of  "seeking  after  God" 
is  finally  over,  when  we  can  surrender  our- 
selves to  the  exquisite  sensation  of  feeling 
our  spiritual  faculties  dulled  by  reposeful 
inactivity?  If  there  were  no  lovelight  in  a 
mother's  eyes,  if  one  did  not  have  to  stand 
by  the  open  grave,  if  faith  and  hope  and 
love  had  not  transfigured  human  lives,  if 
Jesus  had  not  lived,  who  saw  life  so  sanely, 
who  put  eternal  life  in  terms  of  human  life, 
who  dared  and  trusted  beyond  what  any 
other  man  had  ever  dared  or  trusted!  In 
Jesus  were  gathered  up  the  moral  intuitions 
of  the  race.  Some  things  abide  as  witness 
of  his  sway.  Love  has  fulfilled  the  law. 
Brotherly  kindness  has  expanded  the  life 
of  men.  The  family  affections,  the  homes 
where  Love  presides,  the  innocence  of  little 
children,  the  strength  of  resolute  manhood, 
the  trust  of  mellowing  age,  the  sense  of  the 
presence  of  God — these  are  and  abide,  and 
these  will  not  let  die  the  spiritual  and  the 
divine  within  us.  We  must  seek  after  God 
if  haply  we  may  feel  after  him  and  find 


28        The  Things  That  Abide 

him,  though  he  be  not  far  from  every  one 
of  us. 

If  every  vestige  of  this  magnificent  civil- 
ization were  to  be  swept  away,  and  every 
remembrance  of  it  to  perish  utterly,  it 
would  all  be  potentially  recoverable  in  the 
unsubduable  spirit  of  man.  One  by  one  the 
elements  would  be  overcome.  Step  by  step 
man  would  find  his  way  back  up  the  long 
stairs  of  material  progress.  And  if  every 
religious  institution,  every  rite  and  form, 
every  Bible  and  every  creed  were  to  sink 
into  the  deepest  oblivion  man  would  find 
his  God.  For  God  would  remain,  and  the 
revelation  of  Him  would  only  await  the  up- 
ward turning  of  the  human  spirit.  Faith, 
hope,  love, — if  there  were  a  God  these 
would  be  his  footprints.  So  long  as  these 
abide  there  can  be  no  dimming  of  the 
fundamental  religious  consciousness. 

The  oak  of  a  century  falls  in  the  storm. 
But  oak  life  is  not  destroyed ;  the  acorn  we 
plant  to-day  has  just  as  much  chance,  per- 
haps more,  to  reach  the  century  mark. 
There  is  amoral  fall  in  our  midst.  Some  man 
meets  his  great  temptation,  and  yields ;  the 
moral  life  goes  to  pieces.  But  purity,  sin- 
cerity, righteousness  have  not  ceased  to  be 
ideals,  nor  have  they  become  unattainable. 


The  Things  That  Abide        29 

Out  of  the  framework  of  the  religious  life 
many  things  have  gone,  things  on  which 
true  souls  leaned  and  which  were  precious 
to  them.  To  some  these  losses  seem  irreme- 
diable. It  is  not  really  so.  The  real  things 
remain,  and  the  soul  is  not  less  stirred  and 
exercised  toward  its  predetermined  destiny. 
And  life  when  it  is  sure  of  itself  must 
have  its  grand  credo. ' '  I  believe  in  God,  the 
Father  Almighty" — perhaps  the  loftiest 
flight  of  the  human  soul.  We  may  not  be 
as  daring ;  we  can  at  least  be  as  true.  And 
devotion  to  truth  will  bring  a  recognition 
of  the  fundamental  facts  from  which  that 
flight  was  winged.  Some  flight  will  be 
taken — the  triumphant  note  of  the  tri- 
umphing life.  Up  the  ladder  of  the  things 
that  abide,  through  contact  with  other  lives, 
through  suffering,  through  endurance, 
through  the  deep  experiences  of  the  day's 
work,  through  faith,  through  hope,  through 
love,  in  the  footsteps  of  Jesus,  at  last  we 
shall  scale  the  heights  and  there  shall  burst 
upon  us  the  unspeakable  vision.  At  last 
we  shall  speak  it,  reverently  but  with  un- 
conquerable assurance — my  Lord  and  my 
God! 


Confession    Before   Men 


Confession   Before   Men 

"Every  one  therefore  who  shall  confess  me 
before  men,  him  will  I  also  confess  before  my 
Father  which  is  in  heaven.  But  whosoever  shall 
deny  me  before  men,  him  will  I  also  deny  before 
my  Father  which  is  in  heaven. ' ' 

"Inasmuch  as  ye  have  done  it  unto  one  of  the 
least  of  these  my  brethren,  ye  have  done  it  unto 
me." 

FRANKNESS  is  the  highest  characteris- 
tic of  sincerity.  And  if  to  frankness 
there  be  added  courage  of  rare  and  endur- 
ing quality  the  noblest  type  of  manhood 
results.  Its  directness  dissipates  the  murky 
odors  of  diplomatic  fencing  as  the  morning 
sun  chases  away  the  night-damps.  Its 
wholesome  simplicity  has  the  tonic  effect 
of  ozone.  We  like  to  know  where  to  find  a 
man.  If  he  has  opinions  we  like  to  know 
that  he  will  stand  for  them,  that  whether  an 
ally  or  opponent  he  can  be  counted  on  and 
allowed  for  with  something  like  mathemati- 
cal exactness.  The  world  despises  a  dough- 
face; it  applauds  to  the  echo  the  man  who 
has  the  courage  of  his  convictions.  When 


34         The  Things  That  Abide 

a  man  fails  to  come  out  into  the  open  we 
can  only  explain  it  by  the  weakness  of  his 
cause  or  his  own  pusillanimity.  Certainly 
we  shall  put  little  faith  in  him  who  defends 
his  cause  or  his  convictions  only  in  secret. 
What  is  any  man 's  loyalty  worth  if  he  dare 
not  avow  it  ?  Are  you  a  democrat,  and  yet 
ashamed  to  own  your  creed  ?  Then  you  are 
not  a  democrat,  and  democracy  does  well 
to  commit  to  you  neither  trust  nor  respon- 
sibility. When  the  " Round  Robin"  at- 
tempted to  break  through  the  red-tape 
meshes  which  confined  our  soldiers  to  the 
fever-laden  trenches  of  Cuba,  and  when  the 
War  Department  published  Colonel  Roose- 
velt's impetuous  appeal  from  Santiago,  the 
political  wiseacres  held  up  their  hands  in 
horror.  A  fatal  slip  for  a  politcian !  True ; 
but  whether  the  people  or  the  politicians 
control,  whether  he  is  politically  rewarded 
or  humiliated,  frank  sincerity  cannot  hurt 
a  sincere  man.  To  him  nothing  but  insin- 
cerity and  cowardice  can  be  fatal. 

And  if  this  quality  of  straightforward- 
ness is  so  important  in  the  general  relations 
of  life,  how  much  more  vital  is  it  in  that 
which  touches  all  the  inner  sanctuaries  of 
being.  What  shall  be  said  of  the  religious 
man  who  hesitates,  or  is  ashamed  or  afraid 


Confession  Before  Men         35 

to  confess  his  faith.  Can  a  man  be  touched 
in  a  living  way,  and  be  ashamed  of  the 
touch?  Can  a  man  be  healed,  and  contain 
his  joy  ?  Surely  confession  is  the  least  that 
can  be  asked  of  him.  Surely  without  this 
neither  intellectual  nor  spiritual  honesty 
can  exist. 

In  view  of  this  instinctive  demand  for 
outspokenness,  and  of  Jesus'  ringing  in- 
sistence, it  is  not  strange  that  the  Church 
has  laid  tremendous  emphasis  upon  the 
confessional.  Every  avenue  of  expression 
has  been  seized  and  made  to  avow  the  faith. 
Through  genuflections  and  crossings, 
auricular  confession,  recitative  litanies  and 
liturgies,  family  prayers,  grace  before  meat, 
prayer-meeting  and  testimony-meeting, 
catechisms,  creeds,  and  sacraments,  the 
Church  has  bodied  forth  its  dependence 
upon,  and  its  intimate  relations  with,  the 
unseen  and  eternal  ruler  of  the  universe. 
Particularly  in  the  Non-Conformist  and 
Puritan  environment,  the  more  immediate 
background  for  most  of  us,  all  ordinary 
expression,  conversational  and  literary, 
came  to  be  saturated  with  the  phrases  of 
Scripture  and  with  the  logic  of  creeds  and 
catechisms. 

That  all  these  expressions  are  still  vital 


36         The  Things  That  Abide 

and  active,  that  they  are  still  bound  up 
with  the  life  and  activity  of  the  Christian 
Church  the  world  over,  cannot  be  gainsaid. 
Yet  if  we  look  outside  the  conventional 
church  circles  and  communities  into  the 
larger  social  and  intellectual  movements  of 
our  time,  we  cannot  but  be  struck  with  the 
sharp  contrast  in  the  present  attitude  of 
men  toward  all  these  confessional  activities. 
We  have  them  all,  but  how  much  less  stren- 
uous the  insistence.  They  are  apathetically 
employed.  Speaking  broadly,  a  strange 
reticence  has  fallen  upon  the  religious  life. 
The  Scriptural  flavor  has  dropped  out  of 
conversation,  or  strikes  us  as  archaic  and 
quaint  in  the  speech  of  the  generation  that 
is  passing  away.  Grace  before  meat  is  the 
exception,  not  the  rule,  among  those  who 
call  themselves  Christian.  Family  prayers 
are  unfamiliar  to  this  generation,  being 
given  over  to  clergymen  and  others  special- 
ly elect.  Even  prayer  itself,  as  a  habit,  as 
our  fathers  knew  it,  seems  well  on  toward 
obsolescence.  Catechisms  are  relegated  to 
our  intellectual  garrets;  creeds  are  merely 
historical  documents.  And  if  one  misses 
baptism,  or  is  absent  from  the  solemn  cele- 
bration of  the  Lord's  Supper,  is  this  a 
source  of  uneasiness,  and  does  he  count 


Confession  Before  Men         37 

himself  for  that  reason  hardly  to  escape 
damnation  ? 

There  are  those  who  regard  this  state  of 
affairs  as  most  alarming.  It  is  a  sign  that 
the  religious  life  is  dying  out.  It  marks 
a  fatal  degeneracy,  a  dangerous  encroach- 
ment of  the  worldly  life.  Any  forward 
movement  must  first  galvanize  these  activi- 
ties into  life.  How  else  can  we  hope  for 
Christian  growth,  or  even  preservation  ?  If 
family  prayers  and  grace  before  meat  are 
pushed  aside  as  old-fashioned,  if  the 
prayer-meeting  and  the  public  testimony 
are  a  burden,  wherein  is  the  Christian  life 
to  have  any  manifestation?  What  shall 
we  say,  to  young  people  especially,  who 
come  from  homes  which  honor  and  cherish 
these  old  things,  and  whose  religious  life 
at  first  contact  with  the  larger  intellectual 
life  of  the  university,  is  filled  with  confu- 
sion? 

In  so  far  as  this  confusion  and  this  dry- 
ing up  of  the  fount  of  religious  expression 
indicate  a  real  lapse  of  ideals,  a  waning  of 
noble  purpose  and  high  endeavor,  we  may 
well  share  in  this  concern.  But  before  we 
fall  into  despair,  let  us  give  this  modern, 
undemonstrative,  tongue-tied,  non-conform- 
ing Christian  a  hearing.  Is  it  possible  that 


38         The  Things  That  Abide 

these  formal  modes  of  confession,  handed 
down  from  the  past,  are  no  longer  the 
touchstones  of  the  religious  life?  Is  there 
perhaps  a  reason,  not  dishonorable,  for  the 
silence  and  the  qualm,  for  the  lack  of  Bible 
phrasing,  for  the  waning  of  forms,  for  the 
lessening  burden  of  souls  which  made  the 
religious  man's  conversation  dwell  so  per- 
sistently upon  the  concerns  of  the  other 
world?  Is  it  possible  that  if,  instead  of 
mournfully  following  these  dry  channels, 
we  cut  down  below  the  surface,  we  shall 
find  the  strong,  deep  currents  of  the  re- 
ligious life  flowing  on  with  undiminished 
force  ? 

And  first,  is  it  not  true  that  confession 
came  to  be,  in  large  measure,  a  stereotyped 
thing?  That  which  was  originally  fluid 
and  spontaneous  became  rigid  and  fixed — 
the  iteration  of  certain  formulas,  the  me- 
chanical doing  of  certain  things  in  certain 
prescribed  ways?  Now  true  religious  ex- 
pression must  be  free  from  compulsion.  It 
must  be  spontaneous.  It  must  not  be  di- 
vorced from  the  real  form  and  habit  of  life. 
Religious  expression  must  be  the  over- 
bubbling  of  a  life  that  is  real  and  fruitful, 
not  a  galvanic  battery  charged  from  with- 
out. Confession  may  be  aspiration :  if  true, 


Confession  Before  Men         39 

it  will  be  expressed  in  modesty  of  spirit. 
Confession  may  be  experience :  if  profound, 
it  will  not  be  voluble. 

Another  reason  why  these  forms  of  con- 
fession have  lost  their  importance  is  their 
unreality  as  expressions  of  the  religious 
life.  TJie  type  of  piety  which  impressed 
itself  most  strongly  upon  the  religious  life 
of  the  larger  half  of  the  nineteenth  century 
was  that  morbidly  acute  psycho- theologic 
Calvinism  which  fed  the  religious  emotions 
chiefly  among  tombstones  and  in  contempla- 
tion of  the  eternal  infelicity  of  the  wicked. 
Not  merely  that  the  other  world  only  was 
important,  but  salvation  was  to  be  obtained 
by  confessing  to  a  tortuous  and  intricate 
metaphysics  which  crucified  and  smothered 
every  healthy  human  emotion.  Thus  the 
worthy  author  of  that  once  famous  tract, 
"The  Young  Cottager,"  would  gather  his 
class  of  young  girls  at  the  parish  house  on 
Saturday  afternoons  for  instruction  in  the 
catechism  and  the  Scriptures.  "I  had  not 
far  to  look,"  he  says,  "for  subjects  of 
warning  and  exhortation  suitable  to  my 
little  flock.  I  could  point  to  the  graves  and 
tell  my  pupils  that,  young  as  they  were, 
none  of  them  were  too  young  to  die;  and 
that  probably  more  than  half  of  the  bodies 


40         The  Things  That  Abide 

which  were  buried  there  were  those  of  chil- 
dren. ...  I  used  to  remind  them  that 
the  hour  was  'coming  in  which  all  that  are 
in  the  grave  shall  hear  his  voice,  and  shall 
come  forth ;  they  that  have  done  good  unto 
the  resurrection  of  life,  and  they  that  have 
done  evil  unto  the  resurrection  of  damna- 
tion.' I  often  availed  myself  of  these  op- 
portunities to  call  to  their  recollection  the 
more  recent  deaths  of  their  own  relatives. ' ' 
And  when  one  of  the  more  susceptible  of 
these  premature  saints,  little  twelve-year- 
old  Jane,  was  taken  sick,  how  adroitly  this 
same  hypnotic  sanctimoniousness  carried 
her  through  all  the  metaphysical  stages  of 
conversion  and  hastened  her  on  to  the 
grave.  With  what  subtle  acuteness  was  her 
own  self -consciousness  aroused  and  stimu- 
lated so  that  there  should  be  detected  and 
rooted  out  any  shade  of  the  heresy  of  natu- 
ral expression! 

Fortunately  this  morbid,  gloomy  idea  of 
piety  has  passed  away.  The  religious  at- 
mosphere, so  heavily  charged  with  miasma, 
has  gradually  cleared  itself.  Thanks  to 
science,  thanks  to  the  Church,  thanks  to  the 
renaissance  of  healthy  human  emotion,  the 
religious  life  has  largely  regained  its 
robustness.  But  the  flavor  of  the  old 


Confession  Before  Men         41 

lingers  in  many  of  our  confessional  forms. 
The  notion  that  the  religious  person,  espe- 
cially the  clergyman,  is  apart  from  life  in 
its  every-day  aspect,  that  laughter  and 
lightness  of  touch  are  inconsistent  with  the 
gravity  of  religion,  is  one  hard  to  be  rid 
of.  You  will  remember  in  Caleb  West, 
after  the  accident,  how  old  Bowles's  heart 
sank  within  him  as  he  gazed  upon  the  white 
tie  of  the  major,  and  the  suspicion  flashed 
upon  his  mind  that  his  visitor  might  be  a 
clergyman  and  liable  any  moment  to  drop 
down  and  pray  with  him.  How  many  of 
us,  I  wonder,  recall  the  uneasy  feeling  in 
the  presence  of  "the  minister,"  whose  habit 
of  miscellaneous  praying  might  at  any  mo- 
ment give  him  an  unfair  advantage  over 
us! 

There  is  no  doubt  also  that  men  have 
confessed  to  preposterous  things.  No  man 
at  any  time  hath  seen  the  Father.  Our 
knowledge  of  God  does  not  come  through 
the  physical  senses.  There  is  no  mathemat- 
ical formula  which  comprehends  him. 
There  is  no  chemistry  which  reveals  him. 
He  is  not  to  be  weighed  in  any  scales.  But 
man  can  see  beyond  these  facts  and  forces. 
Something  comes  to  him  out  of  the  stillness. 
Imagination,  faith,  hope,  love,  point  to 


42        The  Things  That  Abide 

things  that  transcend  sense  experience.  Yet 
men  looking  with  the  eyes  of  the  soul  deep 
into  these  silent  mysteries  have  not  always 
been  able  to  report  correctly  what  they  have 
seen.  Their  vision  has  been  partial,  de- 
fective. They  have  been  too  indolent,  or 
too  prejudiced,  or  too  ignorant  to  relate 
it  properly  to  the  facts  of  the  universe. 
And  so  God  has  been  reported  manlike, 
whimsical,  arbitrary,  contradictory.  He 
has  been  said  to  do  from  impulse  that  which 
was  put  into  the  constitution  of  the  uni- 
verse. The  sinuosities,  vagaries,  and  im- 
perfections of  humankind  have  been  read 
into  the  divine  decrees  and  pronounced 
good,  since  whatever  is  of  God  justifies  it- 
self. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  the  meekness  of 
1  'The  Young  Cottager"  is  the  exact  oppo- 
site of  robustness;  that  the  self-conscious 
piety  engendered  by  its  false  metaphysics 
must  bring  the  religious  life  into  disrepute 
and  under  deep  suspicion  with  normal  men 
and  women.  Christianity  has  been  en- 
gaged, in  our  generation,  in  a  mighty  effort 
to  shake  off  these  weights.  Christianity 
has  had  to  demonstrate  its  genuineness,  its 
ability  to  look  you  in  the  eye,  its  power  to 
separate  itself  from  an  unreal  metaphysics 


Confession  Before  Men         43 

and  a  maudlin  psychology  and  to  appeal 
straight  out  to  common  sense  in  the  name 
of  righteousness  and  true,  unselfish  living. 
It  has  had  to  supplant  the  old  selfish,  self- 
conscious  saving  of  the  soul  by  the  larger 
concern  for  individual,  social,  and  national 
rectitude;  the  Miltonic  theocracy  by  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  and  the  Brotherhood  of 
Man. 

We  are  not  an  emotional  people.  We  do 
not  wear  our  hearts  upon  the  sleeve.  We 
are  too  much  in  earnest,  perhaps,  to  be 
appealed  to  by  the  dramatic  side  of  self- 
expression.  With  Anglo-Saxon  folk  the 
deep  things  of  life  do  not  readily  find  ex- 
pression. The  vision  that  comes  to  us  we 
may  laboriously  and  perhaps  successfully 
communicate.  But  what  that  infinite  and 
eternal  relation  is,  how  it  sweeps  in  upon 
our  lives,  how  it  opens  to  us  and  we  to  it, 
the  fusing  of  our  aspirations,  our  longings, 
our  experiences,  this  can  only  be  worked 
out  in  the  quietness  and  sobriety  of  the 
unselfish  life.  Prophets  and  poets  some- 
times touch  these  heights  and  depths,  and 
we  respond  to  the  touch.  But  it  does  not 
become  us  to  engage  in  wanton  frolic  on 
this  holy  ground.  The  deepest  experiences 
cannot  be  shared;  they  cannot  even  be 


44         The  Things  That  Abide 

talked  about.  If  we  say  much  about  them, 
they  may  be  real,  but  they  are  not  deep; 
they  may  stir  our  emotions  and  express 
themselves  in  passionate  ecstasy  or  despair, 
but  they  are  not  our  fibre,  not  bone  of  bone 
and  sinew  of  sinew. 

At  no  point  has  the  readjustment  of 
Christianity  to  life  been  more  difficult  than 
with  reference  to  prayer.  Prayer  should 
be  the  soul's  sincerest  expression.  Prayer 
should  be  the  religious  man 's  most  constant 
and  intimate  habit  of  mind.  Yet  in  nothing 
is  the  modern  religious  man  more  reticent. 
Is  it  because  we  should  not  ask  God  for 
trivial  things?  Is  it  because,  once  for  all, 
in  the  constitution  of  the  universe,  things 
were  so  ordered  that  any  petition  is  an 
impertinence?  These  questions  miscon- 
ceive the  whole  significance  of  prayer. 
Certainly  prayer  should  not  be  too  familiar. 
We  do  not  need  to  tell  God  many  things 
about  ourselves  or  others.  Certainly  we 
must  take  into  account  the  eternal  order  of 
the  universe.  But  it  is  not  the  triviality 
of  the  things  asked  for,  nor  the  intimacy 
assumed,  nor  the  disregard  of  unchanging 
law,  that  repels:  it  is  the  immaturity  of  the 
spiritual  sense.  Have  we  not  too  often  re- 
versed the  Scripture  statement  and  thought 


Confession  Before  Men         45 

of  God  as  made  in  the  image  of  man?  To 
ask  God  for  what  we  need  is  not  improper : 
it  will  not  offend  him.  We  may  even  ask 
for  rain  if  the  soil  needs  it:  he  knoweth 
that  we  have  need  of  all  these  things  before 
we  ask.  But  the  asking  is  not  prayer — not 
even  when  we  add  "Thy  will  be  done" — 
unless  the  soul  has  been  attuned  to  the 
spirit  of  prayer;  and  the  spirit  of  prayer 
is  that  we  shall  come  into  union  with  him, 
that  we  shall  see  the  God-purpose,  the 
majesty  of  eternal  truth,  the  beauty  of  holi- 
ness, that  we  be  enfolded  in  his  love  as  the 
flower  is  enfolded  in  the  sunshine.  Then 
rain  and  drought  will  each  be  revelations 
of  God's  order  in  the  world,  and  neither 
will  disturb  our  communion  with  him. 

If  we  are  to  pray  it  must  be  in  the  dig- 
nity of  this  conception.  Let  the  heart  cry 
out:  to  God  we  may  pour  forth  all  the 
bitter  and  the  sweet.  But  we  must  rise  to 
our  highest  thought  of  God  and  walk  with 
him  in  the  heavenly  places,  not  drag  him 
down  to  the  inconsequential,  freakish  level 
of  our  own  spiritual  confusion.  We  some- 
times seek  the  prayers  of  praying  people 
as  if  there  were  some  great  virtue  in  mere 
petition  piled  upon  petition.  When  we  set 
aside  days  for  prayer  and  ask  the  whole 


46        The  Things  That  Abide 

world  to  join  us,  is  there  perchance  some 
childish  reliance  upon  the  mere  machinery 
of  verbal  expression,  some  magic  ascribed 
to  the  multiplication  of  phrases  ?  Or  do  we 
catch  glimpses  of  what  it  is  to  really  pray 
for  some  great  consummation — to  go  about 
its  accomplishment  in  the  spirit  of  prayer, 
consecrated,  single-hearted,  lifted  up  by  its 
nobility  1  The  words  of  ourselves  or  others 
may  help  us  to  wait  on  God ;  in  our  highest 
moods  they  will  often  hinder.  You  remem- 
ber Walt  Whitman's  delicious  revery — 

"When  I  heard  the  learn 'd  astronomer, 
When   the   proofs,   the   figures   were   ranged   in 

columns  before  me, 
When  I  was  shown  the  charts  and  diagrams,  to 

add,  divide,  and  measure  them, 
When  I  sitting  heard  the  astronomer  where  he 

lectured  with  much  applause  in  the  lecture- 
room, 
How    soon   unaccountable    I   became    tired    and 

sick, 
Till  rising  and  gliding  out  I  wandered  off  by 

myself, 
In  the  mystical  moist  night  air,  and  from  time 

to  time, 
Look'd  up  in  perfect  silence  at  the  stars." 

Long  ago  was  phrased  man's  impatience 
with  the  best  attempts  to  touch  with  words 
what  the  soul  sees  in  the  invisible  heavens : 

"The  Lord  is  in  His  Holy  Temple: 
Let  all  the  earth  keep  silence  before  Him." 


Confession  Before  Men         47 

Jesus  took  bread  and  blessed  it  and  gave 
it  to  his  disciples.  What  a  world  of  conten- 
tion, and  pettiness,  and  mystery  has  grown 
up  out  of  this  simple  and  beautiful  act! 
1  'The  tendencies  we  have  towards  making 
mysteries  of  God's  simplicities,"  writes 
Mrs.  Browning,  "are  as  marked  and  sure 
as  our  missing  the  actual  mystery  upon 
occasion.  God's  love  is  the  true  mystery, 
and  the  sacraments  are  only  too  simple  for 
us  to  understand."  If  we  let  go  the  grace 
before  meat,  and  if  the  celebration  of  the 
Lord's  Supper  loses  its  meaning,  it  is 
because  the  simplicity  and  spontaneousness 
are  gone.  And  we  need  not  worry  over  our 
defection  if  it  is  somehow  bound  up  with 
the  resolve  that  all  our  lives  and  acts  shall 
be  in  His  name,  not  merely  the  breaking  of 
bread  and  drinking  of  wine. 

There  is  no  doubt  that  over-protestation, 
instead  of  convincing,  leads  to  suspicion. 
If  confession  were  always  sincere,  if  per- 
formance never  lagged  far  behind,  if  the 
pledge  to  stand  up  on  parade  days  and  be 
counted  on  the  Lord's  side  meant  unflinch- 
ing courage  on  the  field  of  battle,  all  would 
be  well.  But  what  shall  we  think  of  a  loy- 
alty that  needs  ostentatious  proclamation 
once  a  week  to  beget  confidence  in  its  gen- 


48         The  Things  That  Abide 

uineness?  "The  lady  doth  protest  too 
much!"  Is  it  not  possible  that  too  much 
emphasis  has  been  put  on  the  verbal  re- 
affirmation  of  loyalty  to  Christ?  In  the 
ordinary  relations  of  life  we  do  not  require 
or  wish  this  reiteration.  You  surprise  us 
by  this  unwonted  insistence.  We  would 
like  to  assume  that  this  deeper  life  has 
taken  such  hold  upon  you  as  to  become  a 
part  of  your  very  fibre.  If  your  daily  walk 
spontaneously  evidences  this  no  one  will 
question  your  loyalty. 

Yet  one  would  not  speak  lightly  of 
prayer-meeting  or  testimony-meeting;  one 
only  questions  the  emphasis  given  to  the 
elementary  exercise  of  choosing  sides.  Let 
sides  be  chosen,  of  course;  then  exalt  the 
opportunity  for  high  counsels,  for  the  help- 
ful sharing  of  mistakes  and  failures  and 
triumphs,  for  the  expression  of  exalted 
emotion  in  worship  and  praise. 

After  all,  the  strain  and  the  stress  do  not 
fall  at  the  point  of  the  prayer-meeting  or 
the  public  testimony.  In  Tom  Brown  at 
Rugby  it  was  a  sort  of  supreme  test,  the 
turning-point  in  the  religious  life,  whether 
the  sensitive  boy  should  kneel  down  at 
night  and  say  his  prayers  before  his 
thoughtless,  jeering  comrades.  Customs 


Confession  Before  Men         49 

change.  We  are  differently  brought  up. 
Our  private  devotions  must  be  really  pri- 
vate. We  do  not  any  longer  choose  to  pray 
before  windows  open  toward  Jerusalem. 
We  must  really  enter  into  our  closet  and 
shut  the  door.  Yet  must  we  face  the  test 
of  loyalty  no  less  than  Daniel  must  or  Tom 
Brown  must.  Manliness  must  show  its 
colors,  loyalty  must  make  its  confession,  no 
less  to-day  than  ever.  The  test  that  goes  to 
the  very  foundation  of  things  comes  on  the 
school-ground,  in  the  class-room,  in  the 
seclusion  of  your  own  chamber.  Religion 
must  tell  upon  character.  And  it  is  how 
character  stands  the  strain  of  every-day 
life  that  manifests  the  real  confession  or 
denial  of  Jesus  Christ.  Whether  you  are 
a  child  of  God  is  not  to  be  shown  by  nerv- 
ing yourself  to  bear  testimony  in  meeting. 
As  students,  are  you  honest  in  your  work, 
and  in  your  play  ?  Are  the  helps  you  seek 
such  as  give  a  deeper  insight  into  your  task, 
or  do  they  enable  you  to  shirk?  As  men 
and  women,  are  you  set  in  the  path  of  un- 
pretentious, straight,  courageous,  clean 
living,  cherishing  the  simple,  true,  unselfish 
things?  If  religion  is  a  synonym  for 
maudlin  sentimentality,  if  it  comes  clothed 
in  metaphysical  jargon,  if  its  fruit  is  self- 


50        The  Things  That  Abide 

conscious  self -righteousness,  to  go  about  the 
quadrangle  inquiring  of  fellow  students 
regarding  the  condition  of  their  souls  is 
happily  to  speak  an  unknown  tongue.  We 
shall  never  meet  another  human  life  with 
any  real  recognition  except  in  the  realm 
of  outspoken  reality.  Let  any  who  are 
puzzled  by  the  mysteries  and  clashings  of 
creeds  and  confessions  try  the  simpler 
ground  of  living  true — each  day  for  its 
best  things. 

"When  black  despair  beats  down  my  wings, 

And  heavenly  visions  fade  away— 
Lord,  let  me  bend  to  common  things, 
The  tasks  of  every  day: 

"As  when  th'  aurora  is  denied, 

And  blinding  blizzards  round  him  beat, 
The  Samoyad  stoops,  and  takes  for  guide 
The  moss  beneath  his  feet. ' ' 

The  prayer-meeting,  the  Scriptural  con- 
versation, the  grace  before  meat — these 
have  been  the  beautiful  garments  of  faith 
and  hope  and  love.  They  are  alive  with 
the  tender est  experiences  of  the  human 
heart.  Our  fathers  thought  in  terms  of 
Scripture;  perhaps  we  are  thinking  too 
exclusively  in  terms  of  phenomena.  Per- 
haps some  day  the  encrusted  formalism  will 
drop  off  and  the  old  garments  be  made 
fitting.  At  any  rate,  let  us  struggle  for  as 


Confession  Before  Men         51 

adequate  expression,  for  something  as  deep, 
and  true,  and  vital.  Let  our  confession  be 
as  real.  Are  we  less  earnest,  less  loyal,  less 
faithful,  less  brotherly?  If  not,  we  need 
not  worry  at  the  silences  where  our  fathers 
spoke  so  freely. 

And  can  we  then  go  about  our  daily  liv- 
ing saying  little  about  God,  and  nothing  to 
Him,  and  still  confess  Jesus  Christ  before 
men?  This  much  is  certain:  If  we  are 
facing  life  with  frank  sincerity,  if  we  are 
struggling  toward  faithfulness  in  duty, 
sympathy  with  brother  man,  appreciation 
of  loveliness,  we  can  no  more  keep  God  out 
of  our  lives  than  the  bud  can  refuse  to 
flower  at  the  bidding  of  sun  and  dew.  To 
believe  in  the  human  heart;  in  little  chil- 
dren; in  the  sunshine;  in  love  and  its 
regenerating  touch ;  in  the  life  everlastingly 
loving  and  true;  in  the  ministry  of  truth: 
no  man  can  shut  God  out  of  his  heart  who 
thus  believes.  If  one  does  not  see  that  for 
this  cause  Jesus  Christ  was  born,  that  this 
is  the  revelation  of  God  to  us,  that  on  this 
highest  ground  of  human  aspiration  Jesus 
has  planted  his  banner,  that  his  life  and 
his  personality  have  been  the  rally  ing-point 
for  nineteen  hundred  years  for  the  highest 
moral  enthusiasm  and  the  highest  moral 


52         The  Things  That  Abide 

purpose  of  the  world — why,  it  is  a  pity. 
Perhaps  the  creeds  and  the  catechisms,  the 
genuflections  and  the  unreal  testimonies, 
have  had  their  part  in  obscuring  the  vision. 
At  any  rate,  God  can  wait,  and  Jesus  can 
wait,  for  the  recognition. 

The  more  we  study  the  life  of  Jesus  the 
more,  I  believe,  shall  we  find  it  the  embodi- 
ment of  this  transcendent  ideal.  Every 
impulse  that  moves  us  toward  manly  think- 
ing and  doing,  every  breath  of  sympathy 
that  wafts  us  into  accord  with  nature  and 
humanity,  every  lofty  vision  that  presses 
its  way  into  our  hearts — all  bring  us, 
whether  we  will  or  no,  nearer  to  Jesus 
Christ,  a  herald  of  good  tidings,  crucified 
in  Jerusalem  nineteen  hundred  years  ago, 
who,  being  dead,  yet  liveth.  Sometime  we 
shall  not  doubt  this.  Sometime  we  shall 
recognize  that  he  openeth  the  way.  If  we 
are  reverent,  single-minded,  simple-hearted, 
thirsting  for  righteousness,  we  are  follow- 
ers of  him.  Sometime  we  shall  recognize 
and  own  that  leadership — not  perhaps  with 
shoutings  and  emotional  outbursts,  cer- 
tainly not  in  the  petrified  phrases  of  dead 
theologies,  but  without  cant  or  affectation, 
familiarly  though  not  vulgarly,  gladly.  In 
the  solemn  litanies  of  the  Church,  in  those 


Confession  Before  Men         53 

voicings  of  deep,  universal  experience  in 
Psalmist  and  poet,  in  our  own  words  when 
words  count,  in  deeds  always,  we  shall  join 
the  great  swelling  chorus  of  the  ages, 
' '  Glory  to  God  in  the  highest,  and  on  earth 
peace,  good  will  towards  men." 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles 

"   .  .  .  And  greater  works  than  these  shall  he 
do." 

SOME  years  ago  there  was  published  a 
novel  which  attracted  special  atten- 
tion because  of  its  treatment  of  certain 
phases  of  religious  belief  and  readjustment. 
A  young  clergyman  of  the  Church  of  Eng- 
land, single-hearted  and  of  winning  per- 
sonality, established  for  life  in  a  position 
of  great  usefulness,  stakes  his  Christianity 
on  the  reality  of  the  New  Testament 
miracles.  Overborne  by  a  mind  keener 
than  his  own,  which  had  produced  a  re- 
markable book  on  the  History  of  Testi- 
mony, he  comes  to  the  startling  conclusion 
that  miracles  do  not  happen.  In  the 
bewilderment  of  this  conviction  the  whole 
foundation  of  the  Christian  Church  seems 
swept  away.  His  ministry  and  his  life  of 
service  are  based  on  falsehood.  And  so, 
after  a  severe  struggle,  he  leaves  the  church 
in  which  he  has  been  nurtured,  surrenders 
his  position  and  work,  and  goes  up  to  Lon- 


58         The  Things  That  Abide 

don  to  find,  if  he  can,  a  new  expression  for 
religion  and  a  new  hold  on  human  lives. 

For  Robert  Elsmere  this  new  expression 
turns  out  to  be  the  New  Testament  with- 
out its  miracles,  and  this  new  hold  on 
human  lives  centers  in  the  personality  of 
Jesus  of  Nazareth.  The  power  of  the  story, 
we  may  note  in  passing,  lies  in  its  faithful- 
ness to  the  storm  and  stress  of  a  transition 
which  has  disturbed  other  countries  per- 
haps more  deeply  than  our  own,  yet  a  storm 
and  stress  which  no  one  has  wholly  escaped. 
Does  its  significance  for  us  lie  in  that  His- 
tory of  Testimony,  never  written  indeed, 
but  for  which  modern  scholarship  has  col- 
lected so  many  materials  and  which  seems 
so  destructive  of  the  time-honored  faith? 
Or  is  Robert  Elsmere  the  story  of  one 
caught  in  the  toils  of  a  painful  transition, 
who  died  before  the  conflict  was  over,  and 
whose  solution  is  as  transitory  as  the  con- 
flict itself  1  Would  so  terrible  an  engine  as 
the  History  of  Testimony  be  content  to 
destroy  merely  the  miracles  of  Christianity, 
and  leave  the  power  and  personality  of 
Jesus  untouched? 

At  any  rate,  the  miracle  age  has  passed 
away.  Whatever  our  belief  concerning  the 
miracles  that  have  been,  whatever  our  view 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     59 

of  various  exceptional  phenomena  of  pres- 
ent occurrence,  we  are  agreed  that  in  all 
the  ordinary  affairs  of  life  miracles  do  not 
enter.  And  this  is  not  because  the  rela- 
tions of  man  to  the  forces  about  him  have 
changed,  nor  that  he  is  less  responsive  to 
these  forces.  It  is  that  knowledge  has 
increased,  that  effects  are  traced  to  causes. 
The  mysterious  phenomena  with  which  all 
sentient  life  was  once  invested  have  been 
reduced  to  order.  Lightning  and  tempest, 
comet  and  eclipse  have  taken  their  places 
among  law-obeying  events.  The  unknown 
is  mysterious.  The  miraculous  belongs 
to  the  childhood  of  the  race;  and  the 
illusions  of  childhood  vanish  impercept- 
ibly and  harmlessly  in  the  sunshine  of 
growing  knowledge.  The  whole  great 
domain  of  the  miraculous  has  not  shrunk 
to  present  proportions  because  we  labo- 
riously disprove  its  claims.  The  fairy 
tales,  the  ghosts  and  goblins,  the  world  of 
legendary  heroes  disappear  in  the  trans- 
ition from  childhood  to  manhood.  In  like 
manner  the  whole  legendary  history  of  the 
race,  with  its  gods  and  heroes  and  mirac- 
ulous phenomena,  vanishes  in  the  path  of 
intellectual  conquest. 

And  when  we  turn  back  over  the  history 


60         The  Things  That  Abide 

of  Christianity,  there  is  no  one  who  will 
deny  that  the  Church  has  passed  through 
this  childhood  age.  As  Christianity  grew 
and  spread  into  more  credulous  times,  and 
away  from  the  personality  of  Jesus,  mir- 
acles became  more  and  more  common  as  well 
as  more  and  more  fantastic.  They  were,  as 
Lecky  observes,  a  sort  of  celestial  charity 
which  alleviated  the  sorrows,  healed  the  dis- 
eases, and  supplied  the  wants  of  the  faith- 
ful. Demons  torturing  the  saints,  angels 
ministering  to  them,  sacred  relics  curing 
the  sick,  images  opening  and  shutting  their 
eyes — innumerable  phenomena  like  these, 
well  attested,  penetrated  every  part  of 
Christendom,  without  exciting  the  smallest 
astonishment  or  skepticism.  When  Europe 
emerged  from  the  childhood  of  the  middle 
ages  all  these  miraculous  phenomena  passed 
away.  The  Church,  which  no  longer  ex- 
perienced them,  gradually  came  to  regard 
miracles  as  a  necessary  part  indeed  of 
God's  training  of  the  human  race,  but 
belonging  to  the  childhood  age  and  still  to 
be  expected  only  among  crude  and  back- 
ward peoples.  Belief  in  the  miracles  that 
had  been  and  might  still  be  long  remained ; 
but  even  this  belief  has  yielded  to  the 
imperious  spirit  of  the  age.  For  all  this 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     61 

miraculous  phenomena  the  twentieth  cen- 
tury instinctively  seeks  and  unhesitatingly 
accepts  the  simpler  and  more  natural  ex- 
planation. 

This  subsidence  of  belief,  even  of  inter- 
est, in  the  miraculous  is  one  result  of  the 
marvelous  intellectual  activity  of  the 
century  that  has  just  closed.  Most  con- 
spicuous and  most  fruitful  of  all  its 
achievements  has  been  that  study  of 
natural  phenomena,  by  the  method  of 
science,  whereby  the  whole  face  of  nature 
has  been  changed.  Disregarding  received 
or  prevailing  theories,  yet  wasting  no  time 
in  disputation,  the  man  of  science  has  felt 
himself  dealing  with  fresh  and  independent 
data  which  when  arranged  and  interpreted 
would  tell  their  own  unimpeachable  story. 
Science,  speaking  in  her  own  proper  per- 
son, is  authoritative.  To  every  branch  of 
human  inquiry  the  method  of  science  has 
brought  illumination;  and  with  illumina- 
tion has  come  readjustment.  Old  concep- 
tions have  given  way.  Old  mysteries  have 
vanished.  Order  and  unity  have  taken  the 
place  of  what  was  chaotic  and  arbitrary. 
In  the  realm  of  religious  belief  and  theo- 
logical affirmation  the  implications  of 
science  have  been  received,  sometimes  with 


62         The  Things  That  Abide 

joy,  in  the  belief  that  all  truth  is  one,  or 
recking  not  what  overturnings  may  take 
place;  sometimes  with  pain  and  dismay,  in 
the  supposition  that  the  faith  once  deliv- 
ered to  the  saints  includes  equally  the  shell 
in  which  it  is  encased,  or,  recognizing  that 
new  wine  must  be  put  into  new  bottles,  in 
fear  lest  iconoclasm  spill  the  precious  wine 
itself. 

The  miracles  of  the  Church  have  van- 
ished. How  is  this  profound  change  of 
attitude  toward  the  miraculous  to  affect  the 
miracle  stories  of  the  Bible,  and  particu- 
larly of  the  New  Testament?  The  counter- 
part of  many  of  the  Bible  stories  is  found 
in  the  religions  and  mythologies  of  other 
natr  •?  Is  the  Bible  in  a  category  apart, 
or  '^.-v  its  stories  like  the  other  miracle 
stories?  May  we  apply  the  same  rational 
tests  to  the  Bible  as  to  the  cruder  lives  of 
the  saints?  If  we  value  faith  more  than 
knowledge,  must  we  draw  back,  unwilling 
to  know ;  or,  going  through  to  the  end,  shall 
we  have  shaken  off  superstition  and  the 
miraculous  and  turned  our  back  upon  the 
faith  of  the  ages?  Will  knowledge  become 
all  sufficient  so  that  we  shall  look  pityingly 
upon  the  ignorant  and  the  religious  ? 

Eighteenth- century  skepticism,  concern- 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     63 

ing  itself  with  the  reasonableness  of 
miracles,  was  able  to  show  the  improb- 
able nature  of  many  miraculous  phenom- 
ena. But  reason  made  slow  headway 
against  evidence ;  and  if  the  senses  can  ever 
be  trusted  to  report  anything  correctly 
many  miraculous  phenomena  were  estab- 
lished beyond  the  possibility  of  overthrow. 
At  least  the  eighteenth  century  could  not 
successfully  contest  this  evidence;  and  so, 
by  a  feat  of  logic,  a  syllogism  was  evolved 
whereby  miracles  were  declared  to  be  a 
priori  impossible — hence  no  examination  of 
evidence  was  necessary.  With  the  remark- 
able growth  of  natural  science,  a  concep- 
tion of  the  universe,  incompatible  with 
miracle,  came  to  general  acceptance.  This 
conception  was  so  large,  so  ving, 

so  harmonizing,  so  unifying  witn  re- 
gard to  all  the  facts  of  observation 
and  experience,  that  men  of  science 
lost  not  merely  belief  but  all  inter- 
est in  the  subject  of  the  miraculous.  In  the 
first  elation  of  triumph  scientific  dog- 
matism affirmed  again  the  impossibility  of 
miracle  and  contemptuously  bundled  all 
evidence  out  of  court.  Yet  when  this 
theory  was  applied  concretely  to  a  recon- 
struction of  the  life  of-  Jesus,  as  in  the 


64        The  Things  That  Abide 

attempts  of  Strauss  and  Renan,  the  result 
was  too  grossly  improbable.  In  Robert 
Elsmere  there  is  a  returning  realization 
that  a  priori  dicta  are  unsatisfactory,  and 
that  the  question,  of  particular  miracles  at 
least,  is  a  question  of  evidence.  The  History 
of  Testimony  was  to  subject  the  evidence 
for  miracles  to  a  closer  scrutiny,  and  to 
demonstrate  how  unable  humankind  is  to 
report  correctly  and  accurately  the  most 
common  occurrence,  and  the  overwhelm- 
ing probability  of  error  that  would  attach 
to  reports  of  events  and  phenomena  not 
understood  at  the  time  and  not  written 
down  until  many  years  afterward. 

Thus  far  we  have  been  considering 
miracles  as  transcending  and  controverting 
the  laws  of  nature,  as  events  which  no 
amount  of  knowledge  could  explain  because 
they  violate  all  law.  It  is  this  theological 
and  arbitrary  conception  of  miracle  which 
explains  much  of  the  long  controversy  and 
the  tenacity  with  which  the  Christian 
Church  has  clung  to  the  miracles  of  the  New 
Testament.  In  the  development  of  theology 
the  miracles  of  the  New  Testament  came  to 
be  sharply  differentiated  from  the  so- 
called  miracles  of  the  Church.  Miracles 
were  not  to  be  regarded  as  the  usual  and 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     65 

ordinary  accompaniment  of  Divine  favor. 
"  They  were  very  rare  and  exceptional  phe- 
nomena, the  primary  object  of  which  was 
always  to  accredit  the  teacher  of  some 
Divine  truth  that  could  not  otherwise  be 
established."  They  were  an  essential  part 
of  the  Mission  of  the  Son  of  God.  They 
were  needed  to  establish  his  position  in  the 
Godhead.  They  were  proof  of  his  Divinity. 
As  Son  of  God,  and  conscious  of  his  Divine 
mission,  Jesus  had  all  powers.  To  deny  his 
miracle-working  power  were  to  deny  the 
faith  outright.  To  deny  miracles  were  to 
impeach  the  integrity  of  Jesus,  to  take  God 
out  of  the  world.  If  miracles  must  go  so 
must  revelation  and  revealed  religion;  and 
Jesus  becomes  an  impostor. 

This  whole  conception  of  the  nature  of 
miracle  and  its  place  in  the  Divine  Provi- 
dence is  a  refinement  of  scholastic  theology. 
It  is  a  conception  which  could  grow  up  only 
as  the  natural  began  to  be  sharply  differ- 
entiated from  the  supernatural — the  one 
under  law,  the  other  lawless.  It  belongs 
to  an  age  which  believes,  to  quote  the 
author  of  "God  in  His  World,"  in  a  sus- 
pended judgment  and  a  postponed  heaven 
— in  a  God  who  keeps  his  place  while  men 
keep  theirs.  It  is  the  triumph  of  the  mili- 


66         The  Things  That  Abide 

tant  faith  of  our  own  time  to  have  restored 
belief  in  the  immanence  of  God:  God  in 
his  world,  not  separated  from  it.  The 
other  notion  came  in  when  the  hand  of  God, 
the  Divine,  was  not  recognized  in  ordinary 
things.  Men  saw  God  only  in  the  abnormal 
and  mysterious.  But  science  has  steadily 
pushed  forward  its  conception  of  unvary- 
ing law;  and  the  whole  phenomena  of  the 
universe  is  again  advanced  to  that  height 
where  God  was  thought  to  dwell  in  unap- 
proachable silence,  broken  only  when  he 
overturned  a  law  he  had  made. 

To  Christ's  contemporaries  the  wonder- 
working power  was  the  common  possession 
of  all  the  prophets.  Everywhere  they  rec- 
ognized the  immediate  action  of  God.  The 
unusual  and  extraordinary  did  not  surprise 
them;  but  the  key  to  the  use  of  these 
powers  was  given  only  to  the  special  ser- 
vants and  messengers  of  Jehovah.  That 
the  personality  of  Jesus  was  unusual  goes 
without  saying.  That  his  power  over 
nature,  and  over  men,  exceeded  that  of 
those  who  crowded  around,  that  its  expres- 
sion was  sometimes  beyond  their  power  to 
understand,  is  self-evident.  Yet  if  one  will 
read  the  New  Testament  story,  having  in 
mind  the  "evidential"  character  of  its 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     67 

miracles,  he  will  be  surprised  at  the  little 
stress  laid  upon  them.  These  incidental 
accompaniments  of  his  daily  round  of 
doing  good,  these,  to  his  biographers, 
natural  and  spontaneous  signs  and  won- 
ders, nowhere  are  these  made  to  over- 
shadow the  deeper  message  he  was  trying 
to  impart. 

But  to  the  dogmatic  age  which  succeeded 
all  this  had  a  very  different  meaning.  To 
come  into  the  world  in  defiance  of  ordinary 
physiological  laws,  to  walk  upon  water,  to 
reappear  after  death  in  the  physical  body 
— these  somehow  gave  an  approximate  ide.a 
and  explanation  of  one  who  was  trans- 
cendent and  the  Saviour  of  the  world.  To 
come  into  the  world  by  miracle — this 
seemed  to  exalt  the  babe  in  Bethlehem  and 
prove  his  heavenly  origin;  to  us  there  is 
nothing  more  sacred  than  motherhood  in 
the  divinely  appointed  way,  and  the  divine 
breathing  upon  childhood  is  a  ceaseless  and 
uninterrupted  process.  To  walk  upon 
water,  and  to  cast  out  devils — what  could 
more  evidence  the  Messiahship  ?  To  us  they 
would  only  rank  Jesus  among  the  sooth- 
sayers: even  Beelzebub  could  cast  out 
devils ! 

The  miracle  stories  of  the  New  Testa- 


68         The  Things  That  Abide 

ment  are  different  from  the  cruder  mir- 
acles of  the  church  because  they  are  differ- 
ent. They  belong  to  a  soberer  time,  to  a 
simpler  life.  They  are  imbedded  in  deep 
earnestness  and  sincere  worship.  They  are 
organic  but  minor  parts  of  an  artless  nar- 
rative, and  no  undue  emphasis  is  con- 
sciously put  upon  them.  The  synoptic 
writers  were  not  scientists  nor  gifted  with 
great  psychological  penetration.  If  some- 
thing which  the  larger  truth  of  our  own 
age  will  not  permit  us  to  receive  is  inex- 
tricably mixed  up  in  the  account,  we  may 
still  feel  that  the  atmosphere  out  of  which 
it  comes  is  permeated  with  that  illumina- 
tion we  have  been  so  slow  to  discover — the 
harmony  and  union  of  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural,  the  immanence  of  God.  The 
Gospel  narrative  has  this  perfectness:  the 
spirit  is  wholly  attuned  to  the  divine  har- 
monies. No  extravagantest  fancy  of 
mediaeval  art  ever  filled  out  the  significance 
of  the  birth  in  Bethlehem.  Dogmatic 
denial  of  the  Gospel  and  dogmatic  formu- 
lation of  incarnation  are  alike  in  that  they 
coarsely  blot  out  of  the  picture  all  that  is 
sweet  and  heavenly.  And  so  we  go  back  to 
the  simple  Gospel  story,  in  its  incompar- 
able setting,  with  no  concern  as  to  what 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     69 

History  or  Testimony  may  say,  for  the 
spirit  and  the  message  are  there  unchange- 
able f  orevermore. 

But  when  it  is  assumed  that  the  unusual 
and  extraordinary  in  the  New  Testament 
narrative  must  altogether  pass  away,  that 
we  must  reject  everything  we  cannot  under- 
stand, we  shall  not  necessarily  be  con- 
vinced. This  much  must  be  granted:  a 
colder  age  and  sterner  climate,  out  of  touch 
with  oriental  warmth  and  imagery,  has 
laid  a  wholly  wrong  emphasis  upon  the 
miracle  stories  of  the  Gospels.  Belief  in 
miracle  as  a  contortion,  as  an  assault  of 
the  supernatural  upon  the  natural  world, 
inevitably  fades  as  the  antagonism  between 
natural  and  supernatural  itself  passes 
away.  Everything  is  not  therefore  reduced 
to  material  terms.  The  dogmatism  of  a 
scientific  age  is  itself  giving  way.  We  are 
not  now  so  sure  that  every  law  has  been 
found  or  that  all  phenomena  will  yield  to 
our  retorts  and  crucibles.  The  appropriate 
modesty  of  science,  of  asking  every  phe- 
nomenon what  it  has  to  tell,  is  being  ex- 
hibited once  more  toward  phenomena  too 
hastily  dismissed  with  contempt.  "We  are 
perhaps  on  the  verge  of  discoveries  of  per- 
manent value  in  a  realm  long  given  over 


70        The  Things  That  Abide 

to  the  charlatan  and  the  impostor.  The 
residuum  of  truth  in  the  soothsayer's  art, 
the  unexplained  marvels  of  sub-conscious 
activity — some  unveiling  of  the  unseen  may 
await  the  patient  unraveling  of  the  future. 
Yet  when  the  shock  of  such  possibilities 
seems  too  great  for  the  anchor  of  faith, 
there  are  some  things  we  dare  affirm.  Jesus 
of  Nazareth  was  no  juggler.  His  powers 
over  nature  and  above  nature,  if  such  they 
were,  were  not  powers  of  darkness.  They 
had  nothing* in  common,  in  spirit  or  in 
source,  with  the  spirit-rapping,  or  table- 
tipping,  or  sleight-of-hand,  of  the  modern 
soothsayer.  Jesus  had  no  trick  which  he 
took  care  not  to  reveal  to  his  disciples. 
What  he  did  was  not  done  in  secret  or 
through  incantation.  Whatever  he  did  was 
as  spontaneous  as  the  sunlight,  as  fragrant 
as  the  summer  dew.  Whatever  he  did  was 
the  spontaneous  expression  of  an  intrepid 
simplicity.  Jesus  exhibited  proofs  of  his 
Divinity,  not  in  the  strangeness  and  dis- 
similarity of  his  birth,  not  in  thaumatur- 
gical  feats,  not  in  disregard  of  the  laws  of 
physics  or  of  growth.  These  are  not  of  his 
nature,  and  they  would  not  be  revelatory  of 
a  God  who  works  by  law  and  by  process. 
He  was  unusual  and  transcendent  in  his 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     71 

simplicity  and  spiritual  integrity,  in  the 
directness  of  his  intuitions,  in  his  sym- 
pathy, in  his  Humanity. 

The  mysteries  of  darkness,  of  incanta- 
tion, of  trance  make  no  open  door  into  the 
kingdom  of  God.  I  do  not  say  it  is  im- 
possible to  find  God  in  such  abnormal 
searchings.  But  the  open  door  is  other- 
where. The  revelation  which  brings  hope 
and  healing  and  the  Kingdom  is  in  sun- 
light, in  love,  in  unselfishness,  in  the  daily 
doing  of  a  consecrated  life.  The  message 
from  the  eternal  world  is  not  to  be  discov- 
ered in  the  curious  writings  of  uncanny 
hands.  It  speaks  in  the  heart  of  man,  it  is 
the  upspringing  of  the  spirit  in  deeds  of 
love  and  truth,  it  is  the  still,  small  voice 
that  urges  to  gentleness,  goodness,  faith, 
meekness,  self-control.  In  our  moments  of 
weakness  we  agonize  for  some  ocular  dem- 
onstration of  the  existence  of  God,  some 
audible  word  from  out  the  heavens.  If  this 
could  be  we  might  well  doubt  if  there  were 
a  God.  If  God  could  reveal  himself  thus 
there  would  be  no  explanation  for  the  cen- 
turies of  silence.  There  is  one  only  and 
everlasting  communication  from  God  to 
man — the  touch  of  his  nature  with  ours 
There  is  one  only  and  everlasting  God- 


72         The  Things  That  Abide 

method.  It  is  the  sanest  man  who  is  near- 
est God — not  the  seventh  son  of  a  seventh 
son,  not  the  Mahatma,  not  the  overstrained 
ascetic,  not  the  skillful  manipulator  of 
thaumaturgical  tricks.  The  pure  in  heart 
see  God,  and  there  is  no  other  window  into 
the  invisible  heavens. 

Puritanism  did  not  leaven  the  world  and 
leave  its  mighty  impress  upon  the  Anglo- 
Saxon  race  through  its  hardness  and  its 
sombreness.  These  were  its  shell  and  per- 
haps its  necessary  environment;  but  they 
were  also  its  limitation.  It  transformed 
Old  England  and  built  the  New  because  the 
love  of  God  and  the  simplicity  of  Christian 
living  shone  through  the  sombreness  and 
lay  behind  the  austerity.  The  faith  once 
delivered  to  the  saints  has  not  been  pre- 
served in  purity  because  in  your  creed  or 
mine,  or  any  other's,  it  has  been  translated 
into  correct  intellectual  statement;  but,  if 
at  all,  because  having  sown  to  the  spirit  we 
have  reaped  of  the  spirit.  The  law  of  grav- 
itation would  not  be  shaken  though  a  His- 
tory of  Testimony  should  relegate  to  myth 
the  story  of  Newton  and  the  apple;  no 
more  can  such  a  history  strike  out  anything 
that  is  vital  in  Christianity  or  in  the  incom- 
parable records  in  which  it  is  historically 
embodied. 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     73 

Christianity  builds  on  greater  works 
than  miracles.  It  stands  or  falls  by  these 
greater  deeds :  not  more  astounding  myster- 
ies, not  more  startling  violations  of  visible 
law;  but  the  greater  works  of  mercy  and 
peace,  the  transformation  of  lives,  the 
heartening  of  existence,  the  redemption  of 
the  world. 

Whether  in  Cana  of  Galilee  Jesus  ac- 
tually turned  water  into  wine,  or  whether 
John  accepted  a  tradition  which  from 
some  striking  incident  had  taken  on  mirac- 
ulous vesture,  is  a  small  matter.  What  is 
important  is  that  Matthew,  and  Mark,  and 
Luke,  and  John,  and  Paul,  and  the  others 
were  touched  by  the  living  fire  of  illimit- 
able love,  and  were  born  into  newness  of 
life ;  that  down  through  the  ages  the  spark 
has  run  from  heart  to  heart  witnessing 
anew  in  multitudes  of  lives  under  every 
clime  and  condition  the  everlasting  verities 
of  the  life  with  God.  The  greater  works 
have  been  done,  not  alone  in  Jerusalem, 
Ephesus,  Miletus,  Corinth,  Athens,  Rome, 
but  in  every  land — yea,  in  our  very  midst. 
Questions  of  New  Testament  history  are  for 
scholars  and  critics;  the  reality  of  the 
Gospel  can  be  tested  here  and  now. 

The  outline  of  the  life  in  Galilee  we  may 


74        The  Things  That  Abide 

never  be  able  to  fill  in.  What  is  history 
and  what  tradition,  what  is  real  and  what 
illusory,  are  historical  questions  of  extreme 
difficulty.  But  the  message  of  Jesus,  and 
the  immortal  love  it  revealed,  can  never  be 
taken  away.  It  is  witnessed  not  merely  by 
the  humble  men  who  preserved  the  records 
of  the  New  Testament,  but  by  every  soul 
touched  by  that  life  from  that  day  to  this — 
by  every  martyr,  by  every  sweet  singer,  by 
every  humblest  disciple.  All  that  God  is 
we  cannot  know — 

"Flower  in  the  crannied  wall, 
I  pluck  you  out  of  the  crannies;  — 
Hold  you  here,  root  and  all,  in  my  hand, — 
Little  flower — but  if  I  could  understand 
What  you  are,  root  and  all,  and  all  in  all, 
I  should  know  what  God  and  man  is. ' ' 

Wherever  the  seed  of  the  Great  Sower 
has  fallen  upon  good  soil  there  has  sprung 
up  fruit  abundantly.  There  has  been  much 
stony  soil — many  poor  harvests.  Nations 
and  times  have  seemed  impervious  to  the 
good  seed.  But  wherever  the  soil  has  been 
prepared  there  has  sprung  up  the  gracious 
flowers  of  charity,  of  sympathy,  of  self- 
forgetfulness — the  life  of  the  spirit,  the 
Kingdom  of  Heaven. 

In  deepest  sorrow  there  is  no  comfort 
in  the  thought  of  a  God  who,  if  he  would, 


Greater  and  Lesser  Miracles     75 

could  stretch  out  his  hand  and  bring  down 
the  mountains  upon  us.  In  joyous,  fresh 
life  nothing  sanctifies  joy  but  that  life  with 
God,  more  demonstrable  to-day  than  ever  in 
book  or  past  experience.  The  strangeness  of 
miracle  throws  no  light  on  the  daily  duty; 
but  the  promise  of  the  greater  works  shall 
nerve  us  to  confront  with  unswerving  faith 
the  problems  of  our  own  land  and  time.  In 
this  sign  we  conquer.  The  problem  of  edu- 
cation, the  stewardship  of  wealth,  how  that 
brotherhood  and  not  profit  and  loss  shall 
be  made  the  basis  of  the  social  order — the 
outlook  may  seem  dark,  the  problem  repel- 
lent. But  in  the  promise  of  the  greater 
works  we  shall  go  forth  with  joy  and  hope, 
and  upon  its  efficacy  here  we  may  stake  the 
Gospel  and  our  faith  in  the  Christ  who 
promised. 

To  the  devout  Hebrew  God  acted  directly 
in  every  event  of  life.  The  snow  and  the 
rain,  the  harvest,  the  drought  and  famine, 
lightning,  earthquake,  dreams,  visions,  the 
fall  of  a  sparrow — all  manifested  the  per- 
vading government  of  Jehovah.  With  little 
exact  knowledge,  but  exalted  imagery,  he 
clothed  those  unusual  and  more  mysterious 
events  with  language  adequate  to  express 
the  might  and  majesty  of  the  High  and 
Holy  One  that  inhabiteth  eternity. 


76        The  Things  That  Abide 

To  the  tradition-fettered  and  unimagi- 
native theologian  no  act  was  of  God  unless 
it  was  mysterious  and  abnormal — outside 
of  present  or  possible  human  knowledge 
and  experience. 

To  us  has  come  back  the  Hebraic  vision, 
along  with  that  exact  knowledge  which 
mirrors  the  unchanging  law  that  reaches 
from  protoplasm  to  the  love  of  God  in 
human  lives.  And  so  we  take  back  the 
word  ''miracle"  fraught  with  a  greater  and 
grander  meaning — grander  because  of  our 
glimpse  of  the  all-pervading  God  method; 
greater,  and  still  greater  to  come,  because 
of  the  widening  centuries  of  Christian  civ- 
ilization— the  leaven  that  is  transforming 
the  world. 


Tempted   of  God 


Tempted   of  God 

11  Count  it  all  joy,  my  brethren,  when  ye  fall 
into  manifold  temptations;  knowing  this,  that  the 
trying  of  your  faith  worketh  patience. "  .  .  . 

"Let  no  man  say  when  he  is  tempted,  I  am 
tempted  of  God:  for  God  cannot  be  tempted  of 
evil,  neither  tempteth  he  any  man;  but  every  man 
is  tempted  when  he  is  drawn  away  of  his  own 
lust,  and  enticed." 

'  *  Say  not  thou,  It  is  through  the  Lord  that  I 
fell  away;  for  thou  shalt  not  do  the  things  that 
he  hateth.  Say  not  thou,  It  is  he  that  caused  me 
to  err;  for  he  hath  no  need  of  a  sinful  man.  The 
Lord  hateth  every  abomination;  and  they  that 
fear  him  love  it  not.  He  himself  made  man  from 
the  beginning,  and  left  him  in  the  hand  of  his 
own  counsel.  If  thou  wilt,  thou  shalt  keep  the 
commandments;  and  to  perform  faithfulness  is  of 
thine  own  good  pleasure.  He  hath  set  fire  and 
water  before  thee:  thou  shalt  stretch  forth  thy 
hand  unto  whichsoever  thou  wilt.  Before  man  is 
life  and  death;  and  whichsoever  he  liketh  it  shall 
be  given  him.  For  great  is  the  wisdom  of  the 
Lord;  he  is  mighty  in  power,  and  beholdeth  all 
things;  and  his  eyes  are  upon  them  that  fear  him; 
and  he  will  take  knowledge  of  every  work  of 
man.  He  hath  not  commanded  any  man  to  be 
ungodly;  and  he  hath  not  given  any  man  license 
to  sin." 

THE    problem    of    evil    is   the    fourth 
dimension  of  speculative  philosophy. 
What  the  higher  geometry  is  to  the  mathe- 


80        The  Things  That  Abide 

matician,  or  perpetual  motion  to  the  physi- 
cist, such  is  the  existence  of  evil  to  the 
metaphysician.  To  speculate  upon  it  is 
splendid  mental  gymnastics;  it  toughens 
the  intellectual  sinews.  To  place  evil  in 
logical  relation  to  the  universe  is  the  task 
we  are  forever  attempting.  Take  one  intel- 
lectual highway,  and  the  calamities  of  life 
negative  not  merely  the  goodness  of  God, 
but  his  existence.  Take  another  intellec- 
tual highway,  and  the  goodness  of  God  not 
merely  counteracts,  it  annihilates,  evil. 
Take  yet  another,  and  life  is  life  because 
good  and  evil  are  indissolubly  joined,  and 
like  Siamese  twins  the  one  cannot  live  with- 
out the  other. 

So  far  as  what  we  call  evil  troubles  only 
the  introspective  world  of  the  metaphysi- 
cian, or  is  resolved  in  the  heavenly  harmony 
of  the  mystic,  we  may  be  content  to  let  it 
rest  in  these  congenial  regions  of  the  mind. 
But  there  is  another  aspect.  In  the  plain 
path  of  daily  living  evil  is  a  grim  reality. 
The  individual  must  face  it  as  a  fact — evil 
propensities  in  himself,  evil  tendencies  and 
results  in  the  world,  mal-adjustments  which 
must  be  righted  at  fearful  cost.  Good  and 
evil  are  set  before  every  man,  intermingled, 
yet  eternally  at  war.  How  shall  one  con- 


Tempted   of   God  81 

duet  one's  self  in  the  presence  of  this  unes- 
capable  fact? 

' '  The  end  and  the  beginning  vex 
His  reason,  many  things  perplex, 
With  motions,  checks,  and  counterchecks. 
He  knows  a  baseness  in  his  blood 
At  such  strange  war  with  something  good, 
He  may  not  do  the  thing  he  would. ' ' 

Is  there  somewhere  a  harmony  in  life,  a 
height  inaccessible  to  this  strange  contra- 
diction, a  character-strength  and  sound- 
ness proof  against  the  contagion  of  evil 
bacilli  ? 

"Ah,  sure  within  him  and  without, 
Could  his  dark  wisdom  find  it  out, 
There  must  be  answer  to  his  doubt"? 

Asceticism  has  answered,  Yes;  there  is 
such  a  harmony.  There  is  a  height  beyond 
the  reach  of  evil.  There  is  immunity  from 
this  contagion.  But  the  world  must  be 
abandoned;  otherwise  it  were  an  unequal 
contest.  The  world  is  in  deadly  enmity  to 
God.  Therefore  leave  it  to  its  own  self- 
destruction,  and  get  you  apart.  On  some 
high  mountain,  in  some  cave,  on  some  tall 
pillar,  withdrawn  from  all  contact  with  the 
worldly  life,  face  to  face  with  God,  in 
meditation,  in  prayers  and  penitential 
tears,  in  scourgings,  you  may  escape  the 


82         The  Things  That  Abide 

evils  without  and  wear  out  the  evil  pro- 
pensities within. 

This  is  the  sublime  protest  of  the  Age 
of  Faith  against  an  evil-minded  world. 
Meditation  chastens  the  soul.  Prayers  and 
tears,  at  infinite  pain  and  cost,  sweep  and 
garnish  the  house  of  heroic  souls.  Alas, 
that  so  seldom  any  noble,  heartsome  life 
comes  in,  that  there  is  any  fruitage  of  rich 
endeavor.  Often  we  may  fear  that  subtler 
and  more  cunning  devils  enter  in,  and  that 
the  last  state  of  many  an  anchorite  is  worse 
than  the  first.  At  the  moment  when  evil 
is  supposed  to  be  eliminated  life  sours  and 
shrivels,  and  all  goodness  corrodes  in  help- 
less inactivity. 

As  a  formula  for  character  building 
asceticism  has  passed  away  forever.  An- 
other answer  is  given.  The  world  is  very 
evil,  but  there  is  some  good  in  it.  It  is  not 
necessary  to  withdraw  from  the  world :  the 
good  may  be  separated  from  the  evil. 
Avoiding  everything  that  evil  has  touched, 
one  may,  in  fear  and  trembling,  pick  an 
uncertain  way  and  gain  at  last  the  good. 
Worldliness  and  its  deeds  must  be  shunned : 
What  fellowship  hath  righteousness  with 
unrighteousness  ?  If  the  good  things  of  life 
are  pleasant,  suspect  them.  Dancing  and 


Tempted   of   God  83 

theatre-going  and  merrymaking  are  marks 
of  the  worldly  life ;  shun  them.  Is  there 
abandonment  and  enjoyment  in  mere  physi- 
cal life  and  its  activities?  Hold  it  down. 
Life  is  short.  Eternity  overshadows  all. 
There  is  barely  time  to  flee  from  the  wrath 
to  come.  And  so,  little  by  little,  the  soul 
may  be  quarantined  against  the  evil  that 
exists,  may  live  in  its  midst  and  never 
touch  it. 

This  is  Puritanism  with  its  worst  side 
outward — the  severe,  narrow-minded,  un- 
lovely aspect  of  that  which,  in  many  ways, 
is  so  fine  and  strong.  But  this  man  apart, 
wrapped  up  in  his  narrowness,  striking  his 
breast  and  thanking  God  after  the  manner 
of  the  Pharisee,  drawing  his  skirts  as  he 
passes  through  the  street,  barricading  all 
approaches  from  without  the  fold — this 
man's  answer  falls  upon  deaf  ears  in  these 
times  of  ours.  The  whole  spirit  of  the  age 
is  a  protest  against  it. 

There  is  yet  another  answer.  It  is  the 
Zeit  Geist  that  speaks  it.  Men  are  scarcely 
any  longer  interested  in  the  process  of  sav- 
ing their  own  souls.  It  is  too  small  a 
matter.  They  want  to  live.  They  want  to 
achieve.  The  universe  is  moving  forward, 
and  the  thrill  of  that  movement  stirs  every 


84        The  Things  That  Abide 

drop  of  blood.  To  be  a  part  of  it,  a  part 
of  the  propelling  force,  a  contributing  ele- 
ment, a  unifying  center,  is  more  inspiring 
than  any  future  heaven.  Where  the  battle 
is  hottest,  where  life  is  intensest,  where 
temptations  are  thickest,  come  sun  come 
cloud,  come  life  come  death,  there  is  the 
place  toward  which  every  aspiring  soul  is 
impelled.  Something  is  lost  in  the  hot- 
house. The  storms  and  struggles  also  cost, 
but  they  bring  us  more.  The  storm  may 
indeed  overturn  us;  but  if  by  chance  we 
escape,  how  much  stronger  to  resist  the 
next  blast.  And  by  and  by,  by  virtue  of 
storm  and  stress,  through  the  discipline  of 
trial,  how  shall  we  laugh  at  the  fury  of  the 
whirlwind !  If  any  good  thing  shall  finally 
come  to  us,  it  will  be  because  we  risked 
something  for  it,  because  we  did  not  flinch, 
because  we  stood  with  our  comrades. 

The  ascetic  wanders  into  some  lonely 
mountain,  and  troubles  us  no  more  save 
with  those  solemn  confidences  regarding 
the  perfection  he  is  about  to  attain.  The 
other-worldly  man  remains  with  us,  but 
with  fearful,  hesitating  countenance.  If 
he  sees  a  certain  fellow  student  coming 
across  the  quadrangle  he  turns  the  other 
way:  the  fellow  student  is  a  "hard  case," 


Tempted   of   God  85 

and  he  will  not  be  seen  in  his  company. 
He  will  have  nothing  to  do  with  college 
politics  because  bad  men  have  contami- 
nated them.  He  will  not  lend  his  support  to 
any  athletic  contest,  for  students  bet  on  the 
game;  and  he  must  not  encourage  gam- 
bling. He  has  brought  to  the  University  a 
soul  well  saved;  please  God  he  will  run  no 
risk  of  failing  to  keep  it  so. 

This  man  is  a  cipher  in  the  University. 
If  he  escape  being  teased  to  death,  he  may 
indeed  avoid  some  pitfalls.  But  his  life  is 
colorless,  his  positive  influence  nothing. 
Not  so  the  robust  youth.  He  may  have  his 
misgivings.  He  may  dread  the  fiery  fur- 
nace. Yet  he  will  count  it  all  joy  when  he 
falls  into  these  manifold  temptations.  If 
life  is  to  have  any  triumph  he  must  win  it 
in  just  such  conditions.  He  must  demon- 
strate the  strength  of  the  wholesome  life. 
If  politics  are  impure  he  will  gird  himself 
to  fight  the  battle  of  purity.  If  athletics 
are  steeped  in  gambling  he  will  be  all  the 
more  active  that  a  manlier  spirit  may  be 
given  the  preeminence. 

Shall  we  then  seek  temptation  ?  Shall  we 
welcome  evil  in  order  that  character  be 
given  a  chance  of  forming?  Shall  we,  at 
least,  be  indifferent  to  the  play  of  good  and 
evil  in  the  world  ? 


86         The  Things  That  Abide 

This  truth  of  the  sifting  power  of  temp- 
tation, this  joyous  feeling  with  which  we  go 
out  to  meet  it,  has  come  to  us  in  these  days 
with  special  force.  Are  we  in  danger  of 
mistaking  the  nature  of  evil  ?  There  are  not 
wanting  voices  to  say  that  the  problem  of 
evil  has  at  last  been  solved,  that,  strictly 
speaking,  there  is  no  evil.  All  things  have 
their  place  in  the  economy  of  nature,  and 
what  we  call  evil  is  a  working  force  defi- 
nitely building  in  the  evolution  of  the  race. 
Perhaps  the  invading  flood  of  biologization 
has  submerged  the  ancient  boundaries 
between  good  and  evil;  perhaps  it  is  only 
the  pardonable  exaggeration  with  which 
we  emphasize  the  truth  newly  discovered. 
At  any  rate  it  is  maintained  that  good  and 
evil  are  much  the  same;  at  least  they  are 
complementary.  As  for  our  vices,  we  could 
not  spare  a  single  one  of  them.  Were  they 
gone  Nature  would  be  deprived  of  her 
power  of  punishment.  Natural  selection 
would  cease  to  select,  and  the  universe  be 
reduced  to  chaos.  "  There  are  no  saloons  in 
Bellevue,"  states  the  catalogue  of  a  West- 
ern University,  "but,"  it  adds  reassur- 
ingly, "evil  enough  to  develop  moral  back- 
bone." 

When  a  young  man  leaves  home,  fortified 


Tempted   of   God  87 

with  a  fine  sense  of  right,  morally  braced, 
there  is  small  danger  that  he  will  fly  in 
the  face  of  that  splendid  training,  of  the 
purity  of  the  home  life,  of  the  self-control 
so  well  begun.  Temptations  of  these  kinds 
will  come.  The  weaker  men  and  women 
will  sometimes  fall  under  them:  sad  and 
pitiful  is  the  wreck!  But  vigorous,  whole- 
some lives  are  not  thus  undermined.  Rather 
will  they  count  it  all  joy  when  they  fall 
into  these  manifold  temptations,  knowing 
that  the  proof  of  faith  worketh  patience. 
It  is  the  sifting  process,  the  purifying  fire, 
the  winnowing  fan.  And  the  fine  nature 
will  respond.  But  there  is  a  subtler 
danger.  In  the  transition  time,  when  old 
intellectual  faiths  and  intellectual  stan- 
dards are  thrown  into  the  melting  pot,  what 
is  to  keep  old  moral  standards  from  tne 
same  recasting  process  ?  The  old  landmarks 
fade  out,  and  the  barriers  seem  to  disappear 
in  the  subtleties  of  the  new  philosophy. 
There  comes  the  whisper  that  what  seemed 
evil  may  after  all  be  good.  How  can  we 
know  unless  we  taste  and  test  for  ourselves  ? 
To  throw  off  the  shackles  of  custom  and 
enlarge  the  boundaries  of  freedom  is  a 
part  of  our  mission.  If  we  are  tempted, 
we  are  tempted  of  God. 


88        The  Things  That  Abide 

And  there  are  not  wanting  those  who 
stand  in  the  midst  of  the  ethical  standards 
and  safeguards  of  the  world  and  say: 
These  things  which  you  love  to  call  funda- 
mental distinctions  between  right  and 
wrong,  which  you  think  are  determined  by 
an  eternal  and  ultimate  standard,  are  in 
reality  merely  the  surviving  conventions  of 
the  race.  They  are  the  standards  which 
other  men  have  made  for  themselves.  Why 
should  they  be  imposed  on  you  ?  They  have 
not  always  been  what  they  now  are.  They 
are  not  the  same  everywhere.  What  is 
right  in  one  land  and  time  is  wrong  in 
another.  Why  should  you  be  bound  to 
observe  these  irrational  conventions?  Shall 
you  not  demand  freedom  to  follow  out  your 
own  ethical  ideals?  The  restrictions  im- 
posed upon  you  were  made  for  children. 
You  are  grown  men  and  women,  and  must 
be  trusted  to  know  what  is  right  for  your- 
selves. All  these  powers  and  impulses 
which  you  possess  are  God-given;  they  are 
meant  for  your  use  and  pleasure.  Your 
friendships  call  for  this  indulgence,  your 
social  obligations  for  that,  your  appetites 
for  this  other.  Shall  the  conventions  of  a 
fading  civilization — old  wives'  fables — 
paralyze  your  freedom?  There  is  new 


Tempted   of   God  89 

light  ahead.  The  spirit  of  progress  beckons 
you  on.  You  are  tempted  of  God. 

Are  there  any  among  us  who  have  heard 
these  voices  1  Happy  if  the  sharp  thrust  of 
the  apostle  rouses  our  numbed  senses  before 
it  is  too  late :  ' '  Every  man  is  tempted  when 
he  is  drawn  away  of  his  own  lust,  and 
enticed. ' ' 

Why  is  it  that  so  many  fathers  and 
mothers  consign  their  sons  and  daughters 
to  the  university  with  an  anxiety  that  is 
almost  anguish?  They  may  have  doubts 
about  the  modern  curriculum,  sometimes 
they  are  foolishly  afraid  of  the  rationaliz- 
ing spirit  of  intellectual  training.  These 
are  mere  surface  matters.  Their  concern 
is  for  those  subtler  influences  of  college  life, 
those  currents  and  eddies  into  which,  if  the 
freshman  falls,  he  is  almost  surely  doomed, 
where  shamming  and  cheating  seem  marks 
of  intellectual  keenness,  where  dissipation 
masks  as  good  fellowship,  where  moral 
lapse  is  but  an  incident  in  taking  life  as  it 
comes.  If  we  who  are  of  the  University  are 
inclined  to  be  optimistic  it  is  because  we 
believe  the  tonic  influences  are  stronger; 
but  we  cannot  be  indifferent  to  the  conflict 
and  the  danger. 

And  the  danger  is  intensified  by  a  per- 


90        The  Things  That  Abide 

version  of  that  which  has  been  the  chief 
intellectual  distinction  of  our  age — its  dis- 
interested judgment,  the  ability  it  has  won 
of  studying  phenomena  dispassionately,  of 
seeing  things  as  they  are,  of  judging  unin- 
fluenced by  emotions,  will,  and  logic  which 
would  bend  everything  to  a  predetermined 
result.  It  is  this  spirit  which,  making  its 
way  against  every  kind  of  obstinate  preju- 
dice and  preconception,  has  given  us  the 
splendid  results  of  modern  science  and 
modern  scholarship.  But  the  dispassionate, 
passive  attitude  with  which  science  prop- 
erly endows  the  observer  modern  realism 
transfers  to  the  actor.  The  metes  and 
bounds  of  the  individual  life  were  fixed 
generations  ago ;  he  is  what  his  ancestors 
made  him.  Environment  too  is  as  fateful 
as  heredity.  And  so  we  have  exhibited  over 
and  over  again  the  man  of  weak  and  im- 
potent will,  the  helpless  victim  of  the  fates, 
without  the  power  of  resistance  or  recovery 
because  without  the  sense  of  personal  ini- 
tiative or  responsibility,  drifting  aimlessly 
but  always  down  the  stream  of  passion 
and  self-indulgence.  Our  sympathy  is  sup- 
posed to  be  bespoken  because  of  the  good 
but  ineffective  emotions  indulged  in  from 
time  to  time,  and  because  the  tragedy  was 


Tempted   of   God  91 

inevitable,  his  fate  determined  before  his 
birth. 

This  sort  of  fatalism  is  offered  as  a 
soporific  for  an  outraged  conscience;  and 
when  the  conscience  is  sufficiently  drugged 
there  is  doubtless  a  feeling  of  melancholy 
distinction  in  regarding  one's  self  as  the 
plaything  of  impersonal  forces.  But  while 
we  acknowledge  the  tremendous  force  of 
heredity  and  the  determining  power  of  en- 
vironment let  us  reassert  the  sovereignty 
of  the  will.  By  God's  help,  by  man's  help, 
by  his  own  resolute  self-assertion,  every 
man  can  look  his  heredity  in  the  face,  can 
triumph  over  his  environment,  can  make 
some  headway  up  stream  if  he  will.  "If 
thou  wilt  thou  shalt  keep  the  command- 
ments ;  and  to  perform  faithfulness  is  thine 
own  good  pleasure." 

In  this  our  time  of  mental  readjustment 
we  may  question  anew  the  ground  of  every 
ethical  sanction.  But  while  we  throw  these 
intellectual  standards  into  the  melting-pot 
and  work  out  the  new  molds,  we  may  test 
our  life  by  that  which  is  back  of  every 
ethical  standard,  and  which  alone  can  guide 
to  anything  worthier.  Does  this  new  free- 
dom emphasize  privilege  rather  than  oppor- 
tunity? Does  it  whet  the  appetite  for  that 


92         The  Things  That  Abide 

which  was  forbidden  •?  Does  it  urge  to  sense 
gratification?  Does  it  impel  us  to  wound 
any  instinct  of  affection  or  friendship? 
Does  it  accustom  us  to  a  diminished  loyalty 
to  our  highest  ideal  ?  Does  it  put  us  out  of 
focus  with  the  purest  sentiments  that 
inspire  the  world  ?  Is  it  freedom  to  walk  in 
heavenly  places,  or  to  feed  among  the 
swine  1 

Freedom  is  not  exemption  from  codes, 
but  opportunity  to  rise  above  the  plane  of 
codes.  If  freedom  does  not  mean  more 
of  tenderness,  more  of  sensitiveness,  more 
of  single-heartedness,  more  of  sunshine,  it  is 
dearly  bought.  If  life  becomes  more  intri- 
cate instead  of  more  transparent,  it  is  no 
freedom  that  we  should  covet.  To  let  go  is 
sometimes  necessary ;  but  progress  is  reach- 
ing up  and  grasping  hold;  and  everything 
that  has  meant  good  in  our  life  is  seed  for 
the  good  harvest  that  may  yet  be. 

In  acts,  good  and  evil  are  relative  terms ; 
in  essence  they  are  eternally  opposite. 
What  is  good  to  one  generation  or  civiliza- 
tion may  be  evil  to  another.  This  is  not  the 
test.  The  cleavage  is  forever  between  the 
higher  and  the  lower,  between  the  high- 
est that  is  within  our  reach  and  that 
which  is  below  it.  The  struggle  is  on  what- 


Tempted   of   God  93 

ever  the  plane  of  life  we  have  reached. 
When  our  vices  are  ready  to  disappear,  be 
assured  we  can  spare  them  without  loss. 
"When  the  barbarian  and  the  brute  dying 
within  us  shall  be  wholly  dead, ' '  there  will 
still  be  opportunity  for  character  growth. 
To  one  man  poverty  is  a  winnowing  fan; 
but  there  is  nothing  sacred  about  poverty 
that  we  should  labor  to  keep  it  from  leav- 
ing us.  It  is  not  the  poverty  that  makes 
the  man ;  it  is  the  reaction  against  its  bitter 
pressure.  It  is  the  growth  within  that 
saves.  There  is  no  virtue  in  evil  that  we 
should  cherish  a,  certain  amount  of  it  in 
order  to  develop  moral  backbone;  there  is 
virtue  in  struggle,  in  resistance,  in  victory. 
Temptation  does  not  make  character,  and 
he  who  recklessly  throws  himself  in  temp- 
tation's way  may  lose  all  he  hath.  We  do 
well  to  fight  evil  with  all  our  powers; 
indeed,  we  are  not  half  aroused  to  the  need 
of  action;  we  are  all  too  careless  about 
exposing  ourselves  and  those  we  love. 
Everything  does  not  work  together  for 
good  to  those  who  are  but  passive  specta- 
tors in  the  battle  of  life.  It  is  the  pursuit 
of  right  that  gives  strength,  the  never-ceas- 
ing effort  to  climb  higher.  Keyed  to  this 
purpose  one  may  brave  every  temptation 


94        The  Things  That  Abide 

that  comes  in  his  way,  not  like  a  braggart 
or  a  fool,  yet  counting  it  all  joy  because  of 
its  connection  with  the  pulsing  life  of  the 
world.  This  spirit  carries  the  Salvation 
Army  soldier  through  the  vilest  haunts 
untouched  by  the  all-pervading  filth.  This 
armor  carries  a  young  man  through  the 
storm  and  stress  of  youth,  makes  him  a 
tower  of  strength  to  all  noble  purposes, 
brings  him  unscarred  through  all  the  temp- 
tations that  beset  his  pathway. 

To  you  who  are  students  the  gates  of  life 
here  swing  wide  open.  For  you  the  time 
has  come  to  eat  of  the  tree  of  the  knowledge 
of  good  and  evil.  Into  a  world  of  mingled 
good  and  evil,  of  splendid  mountain  heights 
and  abysmal  depths,  you  are  to  push  alone. 
Friends  may  watch  and  pray,  but  you  must 
act.  Go  out  boldly  and  make  your  con- 
nection with  life  where  its  sweep  is  might- 
iest. Be  not  dismayed  that  temptations 
meet  you  on  every  hand:  they  will  prove 
your  faith.  If  life  is  finally  to  have  any 
enduring  quality,  any  lasting  fibre,  any 
persisting  sweetness,  it  will  have  been 
achieved  in  living  and  struggling,  in  over- 
coming and  conquering,  through  trial, 
through  temptation,  through  failure  that 
has  but  held  us  more  steadily  to  our  goal. 


Tempted   of   God  95 

But  if  in  the  heat  of  conflict  you  are 
tempted  to  let  go  any  faith,  or  standard, 
or  principle  that  has  hitherto  wrought  good 
in  the  life  of  the  world,  look  well  to  that 
which  offers  itself  as  a  substitute.  Will 
you  be  truer  for  it  1  Will  the  home  joys  be 
sweeter?  Will  memory's  pictures  be  more 
hallowed?  If  not,  it  is  but  a  mad  delusion 
that  you  are  tempted  of  God.  Pray  God 
the  madness  pass  before  some  awful  chasm 
opens  in  your  headlong  path. 

From  a  life  truly  lived  order  and  unity 
cannot  long  be  hid.  Old  creeds,  old  faiths, 
old  forms  of  thought  must  be  fused  and 
remolded.  But  every  earnest  man  may 
confidently  await  the  reappearing  vision: 

"One  God,  one  law,  one  element, 
And  one  far-off  divine  event 
To  which  the  whole  creation  moves. " 

And  Browning  has  defined  for  us  the 
master  spirit,  type  of  the  warrior,  type  of 
the  conqueror: 

"One   who   never   turned   his   back   but   marched 

breast  forward, 

Never  doubted  clouds  would  break, 
Never    dreamed,    though    right    were    worsted, 

wrong  would  triumph, 

Held  we  fall  to  rise,  are  baffled  to  fight  better, 
Sleep  to  wake." 


Life  Worth   Living 


Life   Worth   Living 

"For  whosoever  will  save  his  life  shall  lose  it; 
and  whosoever  will  lose  his  life  for  my  sake  shall 
find  it." 

THIS  paradox  of  Jesus  was  his  answer 
to  the  question  "Is  life  worth  liv- 
ing 1"  It  is  an  answer  which  the  world  finds 
hard  to  understand.  Its  unconditional 
negative  is  incomprehensible  to  the  opti- 
mism of  youth.  Even  where  the  sharp 
struggle  is  on  it  affronts  the  self-confidence 
of  those  who  will  gladly  risk  everything  for 
the  prize  which  life  seems  to  hold  out.  And 
to  those  who  suffer  shipwreck,  who  fail  in 
the  fight,  for  whom  at  last  all  these  infi- 
nite hopes  and  possibilities  shrink  to  the 
narrowest  confines  of  a  sordid  world,  this 
''saving  of  life"  by  its  loss  is  but  the  bit- 
terest mockery.  Even  where  self-interest 
broadens  into  the  interest  of  humanity  the 
losing  of  one's  life  seems  a  weak  and  impo- 
tent surrender  of  that  prudence  which  is 
the  highest  teaching  of  experience. 

This  question  of  the  worthfulness  of  life 


100       The  Things  That  Abide 

is  as  old  as  human  existence,  yet  peren- 
nially new  to  every  individual  experience. 
Only  once  is  the  answer  unchallenged.  In 
the  morning  time,  standing  face  outward 
toward  the  fast-coming  day,  life  is  full  of 
radiant  promise.  The  fair  vision  of  quest 
and  achievement  lures  us  on,  and  in  it 
there  is  no  suspicion  of  the  bitterness 
which,  in  the  cloudy  afternoon,  shall  poison 
so  many  despairing  hearts.  So  infinite  are 
the  possibilities,  so  entrancing  the  vistas, 
that  every  bit  of  life  seems  royally  worth 
the  living. 

"The  year's  at  the  spring, 
And  day's  at  the  morn; 
Morning's  at  seven; 
The  hill-side's  dew-pearl 'd; 
The  lark's  on  the  wing; 
The  snail's  on  the  thorn; 
God's  in  His  heaven- 
All's  right  with  the  world." 

Happy  if  one  can  keep  this  fine  and  cour- 
ageous optimism  to  the  end  of  life.  But 
for  one  clear  untrammeled  note  like  this  we 
shall  hear  many  despairing  voices.  Life  is 
full  of  storm  and  stress  and  disaster.  Is 
not  disaster,  after  all,  the  larger  chance? 
Is  life  really  progressive?  Is  there  some- 
thing ultimately  worth  the  fight?  Can  even 
the  best-conditioned  life,  when  the  year's 
no  longer  at  the  spring,  justify  itself?  Or 


Life  Worth  Living  101 

shall  we,  even  the  best  favored  of  us,  sink 
at  last  from  Browning's  high  optimism  into 
the  pit  of  Byronic  cynicism? — 

" Count  o'er  the  joys  thine  hours  have  seen, 

Count  o'er  thy  days  from  anguish  free, 
And  know,  whatever  thou  hast  been, 
'Tis  something  better  not  to  be." 

Let  us  look  at  the  material  basis  of  liv- 
ing. Here  apparently  everything  has  been 
prepared  for  man.  All  the  forces  of  nature 
do  his  bidding;  all  minister  to  his  wants; 
all  await  his  penetrating  and  inventive 
search  to  render  yet  greater  service.  He 
has  but  to  command  and  they  obey.  How 
much  was  done  by  the  century  just  closed 
to  make  life  more  worth  the  living !  What 
marvels  it  uncovered !  What  richness  was 
added  to  the  lives  of  even  the  humblest! 
What  were  once  the  costliest  luxuries  are 
now  the  commonest  necessities.  A  Nero 
could  spend  a  fortune  upon  a  single  enter- 
tainment— nay,  upon  a  single  dish.  Yet 
there  were  luxuries  on  the  Fram,  in  the 
icy  desolation  of  Farthest  North,  that  Nero 
never  dreamed  of.  San  Francisco  and 
London  are  actually  nearer  in  all  the  inter- 
changes of  life  than  were  London  and 
Edinburgh  a  century  ago.  Steam  and  elec- 
tricity have  made  all  the  world  neighbors; 


102       The  Things  That  Abide 

and  with  what  ease  and  rapidity  and  cheap- 
ness do  these  neighbors  now  exchange  visits 
and  return  calls.  Compare  the  foul-smell- 
ing streets,  the  impassable  roads,  the  un- 
sanitary dwellings,  the  dim-lighted,  footpad 
haunted  thoroughfares  of  Shakespeare's 
London  with  the  convenient,  orderly, 
healthful  urban  conditions  of  our  own  not 
over-to-be-praised  San  Francisco.  The  men 
and  women  who  witnessed  the  beginning  of 
the  nineteenth  century  traveled  only  on 
horseback  or  in  the  stage-coach.  They  had 
never  heard  of  a  steamship,  a  railroad,  or 
a  sewing-machine.  The  favorite  treatment 
among  all  physicians  was  blood-letting; 
anaesthetics  and  antiseptics  were  unknown. 
Think  of  the  industrial,  social,  and  polit- 
ical development  of  America  during  these 
hundred  years.  What  fabulous  mines  of 
wealth  have  been  uncovered!  What  cities 
have  sprung  up  in  a  day!  What  forests 
and  mountains  have  been  subdued;  what 
deserts  have  been  reclaimed;  what  valleys 
have  been  made  to  yield  their  hundred 
and  thousand  fold  return! 

Is  life,  therefore,  at  last  to  be  pro- 
nounced worth  the  living?  With  all  the 
primitive  hardships  and  inconveniences 
removed,  with  the  undoubted  richness  of 


Life  Worth  Living  103 

modern  life,  has  content  and  happiness 
become  the  common  possession  or  un- 
questioned goal  of  mankind? 

First  of  all,  there  is  the  denial  of  those 
who  are  defeated  in  this  material  struggle, 
who  have  fatally  blundered  or  been  over- 
whelmed by  the  very  conditions  of  material 
progress.  What  an  indictment  it  is  that 
the  submerged  classes  can  bring  against  our 
favored  civilization !  The  interest  of  Look- 
ing Backward  did  not  lie  in  its  fantastic 
automatons  of  the  twenty-first  century,  but 
in  its  analysis  of  the  mal-adjustments  of 
the  nineteenth  century.  All  of  these  won- 
derful improvements  are  real,  but  they  are 
not  for  everybody.  To  the  man  who  has 
nothing  the  knowledge  of  what  others  pos- 
sess but  heightens  his  misery.  He  has  more 
unsatisfied  wants.  It  is  more  difficult  to 
put  himself  in  the  line  of  satisfaction. 
Again,  our  great  undertakings,  public  and 
private,  reek  with  corruption.  What  avails 
it  to  pull  down  one  boss  when  the  condi- 
tions of  political  life  promptly  raise  up 
others?  They  are  not  individuals  so  much 
as  types — fungus  growths  which  it  is  de- 
sirable to  remove,  but  whose  removal  does 
not  cure  the  disease.  With  all  our  achieve- 
ments and  all  our  progress,  it  is  not  the 


104       The  Things  That  Abide 

added  conveniences  of  life  so  much  as  the 
added  uncertainties  that  impress  us.  Mul- 
titudes in  our  cities  fail  to  find  life  worth 
living,  though  not  all  confess  it  through 
suicide. 

But  there  is  a  more  formidable  denial — 
the  protest  of  those  who  are  successful. 
"If  there  were  given  me  to  choose,"  said 
Lessing,  ' '  in  the  one  hand  truth  and  in  the 
other  the  search  for  truth,  I  should  take 
the  search  for  truth."  This  half  truth 
explains  the  bitter  lament  of  those  whose 
search  is  material  success  and  who  attain 
in  life  all  they  had  set  before  them.  While 
the  quest  was  on,  while  youth  and  health 
remained,  while  there  was  something  to  do 
and  overcome,  they  found  life  worth  the 
living.  How  stale,  flat,  and  unprofitable 
achievement  turns  out  to  be! 

There  are  some  whose  desires  do  not  rise 
above  the  stomach.  Life  is  the  gratifica- 
tion of  the  animal  desires  and  instincts;  a 
riot  of  the  passions  in  which  the  strongest 
gather  up  the  reins.  Such  a  life  is  not 
without  allurement.  It  may  seem  to  stretch 
a  rose-strewn  path.  Music  and  mirth 
sound  from  its  sylvan  shades.  In  the  end, 
however,  self-deception  is  impossible.  Life 
is  burned  out.  There  is  nothing  left,  .and 


Life  Worth  Living  105 

the  victim  needs  no  one  to  tell  him  that 
this  is  so. 

But  life  may  be  keyed  to  a  higher  strain 
— self-indulgence  replaced  by  self-control. 
A  young  man  confronts  life.  His  capital 
is  health,  a  clear  brain,  and  educational 
privileges.  Absence  of  money,  influential 
friends,  position,  is  nothing  to  him.  He  is 
scarcely  aware  of  any  handicap.  He  will 
win  all  these.  Every  good  thing  in  life 
shall  be  his  for  the  striving.  And  so  it 
may.  But  suppose  life  has  no  larger  mean- 
ing than  this.  Suppose  these  external  good 
things  become  the  measure  of  the  value  of 
life,  and  that  to  miss  them  is  to  fail.  In 
school  our  youth  will  find  it  prudent  to 
stand  well  with  his  teachers.  He  will 
reason  that  a  brilliant  recitation,  good  man- 
ners, a  judicious  deference  to  the  eccen- 
tricities of  superiors  will  stand  him  in  good 
stead.  He  will  see  the  vantage-ground  of 
office.  He  will  calculate  the  value  of 
acquaintance,  of  patronage,  of  combination 
in  attaining  his  ends.  His  clear  head,  his 
far-sighted  planning,  his  skill  in  manipu- 
lation, his  ability  to  put  other  men  under 
obligation,  the  power  he  has  of  punishing 
those  who  thwart  him — all  these  bring  him 
undisputed  pre-eminence.  Out  in  the  world 


106       The  Things  That  Abide 

this  experience,  this  initial  success,  give 
him  a  fairly  clever  idea  of  how  to  strike 
the  chords  of  larger  success.  He  knows 
what  individuals  can  help  him,  if  he  only 
enlist  their  attention.  He  studies  how  he 
can  do  some  service  to  those  who  have  the 
power  of  helping  him,  and  if  he  succeeds 
he  will  let  it  be  understood,  at  the  proper 
time,  that  there  is  a  mutual  side  to  such 
acquaintanceship . 

And  he  generally  succeeds.  Barring 
some  slip  or  unforeseen  loss  of  balance,  he 
takes  the  place  in  the  social,  business,  or 
political  world  -which  has  been  his  goal. 
And  is  not  this  the  successful  adaptation 
of  the  individual  to  his  environment?  Is 
not  this  the  ideal  which  our  youth  may 
fairly  hold  before  them  1  Are  not  these  the 
winning  cards  in  the  world  as  we  know 
it — the  modern  world  of  hard  and  direful 
competition  1  If  we  move  much  among  our 
fellows  we  shall  find  this  ideal  not  alto- 
gether uncommon.  To  get  what  we  can,  to 
keep  what  we  get — is  not  this  quite  within 
the  statute?  Not  to  be  a  charge  upon  the 
community,  not  to  be  a  defaulter,  not  to 
violate  the  rules  of  the  ring — isn't  this 
about  as  high  an  ideal  as  the  practical  man 
has  use  for?  The  purely  self-seeking  man, 


Life  Worth  Living  107 

if  he  be  really  far-sighted  from  his  own 
point  of  view,  will  reach  his  goal.  Some- 
times he  will  fail;  sometimes  he  will  suc- 
ceed only  at  the  sacrifice  of  his  own 
moderate  ideals  and  the  loss  of  his  own 
scant  self-respect.  The  pity  of  it  is  that 
success  so  often  satisfies;  that  the  blood 
congeals,  and  one  does  not  know  it;  that 
when  the  life  becomes  hard  and  unfeeling 
and  coarse,  one  does  not  mind  it.  "Because 
thou  sayest,  I  am  rich  and  increased  with 
goods,  and  have  need  of  nothing;  and 
knowest  not  that  thou  art  wretched, 
and  miserable,  and  poor,  and  blind,  and 
naked." 

But  there  is  a  deeper  tragedy  in  the  self- 
seeking  life.  The  higher  senses  are  not 
completely  drugged;  success  does  not 
always  satisfy.  Even  where  there  is  no 
outward  catastrophe,  there  is  not  less  evi- 
dence that  the  zest  of  living  has  been  lost. 
A\%at  is  more  pitiable  than  that  groping 
for  the  lost  chords  of  healthy  human  emo- 
tion through  heaped-up  largesses  and 
coarse  philanthropies?  And  what  is  more 
hopeless  than  resurrection  from  the  dead 
of  the  larger  human  life  crucified  in  the 
service  of  self. 

But  such  a  career,  it  will  be  said,  no 


108       The  Things  That  Abide 

matter  how  it  turns  out,  'has  heen  short- 
sighted and  a  mistake,  even  from  the  side 
of  self-interest.  The  higher  and  more  per- 
manent rewards  have  been  sacrificed  for 
the  nearer  and  more  obvious  ones.  Through 
some  coarseness  of  nature,  or  lack  of 
balance,  the  real  resources  of  life  have 
been  neglected.  Real  self-interest,  real  suc- 
cess, is  not  furthered  by  self-indulgence, 
nor  by  a  disregard  of  others.  Surely 
it  is  now  everywhere  conceded  that  the 
ethical  is  in  the  evolutionary  line  of  sur- 
vival, that  in  the  game  of  life  altruism 
loads  the  dice.  To  really  succeed  one  must 
retain  the  respect  of  his  fellows,  and  this 
demands  the  cultivation  of  those  social 
qualities  and  those  larger  relations  of  life 
which  make  for  character,  and  which  pre- 
pare the  way  for  enjoyment  when  the  end 
is  attained. 

To  go  still  further:  life  is  pronounced 
worth  living  in  so  far  as  pleasure  outweighs 
pain.  And  in  the  ultimate  balancing  of  the 
scales  the  highest  pleasures  weigh  the  more. 
The  highest  pleasures  are  not  in  the  satis- 
faction of  the  cruder  and  coarser  wants — 
not  in  money,  not  in  position,  but  in  intel- 
lectual and  esthetic  enjoyments,  in  art  and 
literature,  in  the  refined  relations  and 


Life  Worth  Living  109 

intercourse  of  life.  In  these  is  all  there  is 
in  life — all  its  quantitative  value. 

Does  pleasure  outweigh  pain?  And  is 
life  therefore  worth  the  living?  If  we 
interrogate  individual  lives  we  shall  find 
by  this  test  that  some  seem  worth  living, 
some  not  worth  living.  Taking  all  human 
lives  together,  in  the  sum,  is  the  total  pleas- 
ure greater  than  the  total  pain;  or,  is  the 
trend  of  life,  the  movement  we  call  pro- 
gress, such  that  we  may  hope  to  tip  the 
scales  that  way? 

The  way  in  which  attainment  lags  behind 
desire  has  always  profoundly  moved  the 
poet  and  philosopher,  and  has  given  a 
pessimistic  tinge  to  almost  every  philoso- 
phy of  life.  The  lowest  type  of  this  pes- 
simism is  that  which  cries,  "Let  us  eat, 
drink,  and  be  merry,  for  to-morrow  we 
die."  Again,  it  is  held  that  life  as  life 
necessarily  involves  misery.  It  is  impossi- 
ble to  gather  the  rose  without  the  thorn. 
The  net  result  of  life  is  loss;  and  if  man 
could  live  up  to  his  highest  wisdom  there 
would  be  a  final  end  to  all  in  a  sort  of 
premeditated  and  deliberate  world-wide 
suicide.  Or  again,  since  all  life  is  sorrow 
and  pain,  the  search  for  pleasure  is  vain. 
The  negation  of  desire,  the  absolute  absence 


110       The  Things  That  Abide 

of  both  pleasure  and  pain,  is  the  summum 
bonum. 

There  are  many  standards  and  many 
lines  of  conduct  which  seem  to  those  who 
follow  them,  for  a  time  at  least,  to  fulfill 
all  the  conditions  of  a  life  worth  living. 
Our  problem  is  not  to  be  solved  by  a  census 
of  these  temporary  states  of  mind.  In 
spite  of  the  vision  of  the  morning  we  are 
sometimes  content  with  very  little.  Life 
may  seem  worth  the  living  when  it  is  really 
stunted  and  mean.  The  little  that  contents 
us  blinds  us  to  what,  dissatisfied,  were  the 
larger  possibility  within  our  reach.  The 
first  foothill  fills  the  measure  of  our  aspira- 
tion and  outlook,  and  we  never  climb  the 
heights.  "  Whosoever  will  save  his  life 
shall  lose  it."  However  merry  the  brief 
moment,  pessimism  stalks  in  the  shadow, 
and  the  inevitable  tragedy  of  unfulfillment 
awaits  every  self-seeking  life. 

The  point  we  have  reached  is  this: 
Human  life  motived  within  itself  affords 
no  basis  for  pronouncing  it  worth  living. 
Does  life  turn  in  upon  itself?  Is  there 
some  standard  outside  of  man  by  which  he 
may  be  tested  ?  Is  there  something  outside 
of  man,  kindred  to  him.  filling  his  horizon, 
in  whose  service  he  may  lose  himself  and 


Life  Worth  Living  111 

his  small  ends,  yet  find  himself  a  conscious 
unit  in  harmony  with  a  progression  of 
eternal  significance  ?  Jesus  believed  in  such 
a  possibility.  He  preached  no  gospel  of 
renunciation,  of  immolation,  or  of  extinc- 
tion. "I  am  come/'  he  said,  "that  they 
might  have  life  and  that  they  might  have 
it  more  abundantly."  "Whosoever  will 
lose  his  life  shall  find  it. ' '  When  the  small 
seed  of  disinterestedness  is  planted  in  the 
human  soul  there  is  no  limit  to  the  possi- 
bilities of  growth  and  destiny. 

There  is  a  kind  of  sleight-of-hand  of  lan- 
guage by  which  it  is  made  to  appear  that 
the  highest  ultimate  good,  or,  the  highest 
good  of  the  universe,  or,  in  still  other  terms, 
the  greatest  glory  of  God,  is  also  the  high- 
est pleasure:  therefore  pleasure  is  the 
summum  bonum;  therefore  pleasure  or 
happiness  is  to  be  directly  sought,  and  at- 
tainment makes  life  worth  living.  It  is 
easy  to  lose  one's  self  in  a  language  maze; 
it  is  possible  to  make  these  terms  mean 
anything  we  please.  But  our  ideals  must 
be  rugged ;  any  pursuit  of  happiness  which 
softens  these  is  an  emanation  of  the  self- 
seeking  life.  The  higher  pleasures  are  not 
despicable;  surely  life  will  be  richer  when 
they  are  more  wide-spread.  But  to  say  that 


112       The  Things  That  Abide 

happiness  flows  from  the  ideal  life  is  a 
different  thing  from  saying  that  happiness 
is  the  end  to  be  sought.  So,  too,  the  real- 
ization of  one's  self,  in  the  highest  ethical 
meaning  of  the  term,  is  a  noble  deduction 
from  the  ideal  life.  It  is  the  flavor  of  the 
fruit,  but  it  is  not  the  fruit.  Life  is  an 
investment  of  the  universe  in  us.  To 
respond  to  the  universe,  to  grow  into  the 
larger  image,  through  the  pain,  through 
the  pleasure,  in  spite  of  pain,  in  spite  of 
pleasure,  this  is  to  attain  the  crown  of  life. 
"I  have  been  compensated  in  this  cause  a 
million  times  over,"  said  Garrison  of  his 
anti-slavery  struggle.  "In  the  darkest 
hour,  in  the  greatest  peril,  I  have  felt  just 
at  that  moment  that  it  was  everything  to 
be  in  such  a  cause." 

Human  life  justifies  itself  by  its  quality, 
its  perfume,  its  essential  nature,  not  by  its 
accumulations,  its  felicities,  its  preponder- 
ance of  pleasures  over  pains.  The  worth 
in  life  is  an  emanation,  a  fine  and  delicately 
adjusted  temper  of  mind  and  soul,  the 
unconsidered  and  unconscious  outpouring 
of  an  abounding  nature.  If  you  analyze 
it,  it  is  not  there.  Introspection  blights  it. 
The  scales  cannot  weigh  it.  When  you 
seek  to  apply  the  test  of  self-interest  it 


Life  Worth  Living 

vanishes  away.  What  would  remain  of 
that  ineffable  perfume  of  life  if  we  insist 
on  applying  the  quantitative  tests  of  mate- 
rial treasures,  or  happiness,  or  self-realiza- 
tion. Man  was  not  made  for  happiness; 
not  even  for  self-realization.  These  may 
be  indications  along  the  way.  But  man  was 
made  for  the  immortal  life.  * '  He  that  giv- 
eth  a  cup  of  cold  water  in  the  name  of  a  dis- 
ciple shall  not  lose  his  reward."  We  need 
not  deny  him  happiness,  self-realization; 
but  these  are  not  his  reward.  His  reward 
is  in  power,  in  widened  sympathies  and 
relations.  "The  profit  of  every  act  should 
be  this,  that  it  was  right  for  us  to  do  it. " 
If,  then,  life  is  to  be  motived  from  without 
we  shall  find  its  gateway  in  self-sacrifice. 
Self-sacrifice  is  not  the  end  of  life — only  its 
gateway.  Jesus  did  not  emphasize  the 
losing  but  the  finding.  Self-sacrifice  does 
not  end  in  doing  everything  for  others  and 
allowing  them  to  do  nothing  for  you  in 
return.  Giving  implies  a  responsive  rela- 
tion. Giving  one's  life  is  not  indiscrim- 
inate charity,  nor  the  conscious  going  about 
to  dispense  good.  Says  Thoreau,  "If  I 
knew  for  a  certainty  that  a  man  was  com- 
ing to  my  house  with  the  conscious  design 
of  doing  me  good,  I  should  run  for  my  life 


114      The  Things  That  Abide 

...  for  fear  that  I  should  get  some  of  his 
good  done  to  me,  some  of  its  virus  mingled 
with  my  blood.  ...  I  want  the  flower  and 
fruit  of  a  man;  that  some  fragrance  be 
wafted  over  from  him  to  me,  and  some  ripe- 
ness flavor  our  intercourse.  His  goodness 
must  not  be  a  partial  and  transitory  act, 
but  a  constant  superfluity  which  costs  him 
nothing  and  of  which  he  is  unconscious." 
It  is  easy  enough  to  throw  money  to  a 
beggar;  a  very  different  thing  to  give  him 
one  tiny  uplift  toward  a  better  life.  Con- 
scious self-sacrifice  is  giving  up  instead  of 
giving  out. 

"For  this  is  Love's  nobility,— 
Not  to  scatter  bread  and  gold, 
Goods  and  raiment  bought  and  sold; 
But  to  hold  fast  his  simple  sense, 
And  speak  the  speech  of  innocence, 
For  he  that  feeds  men  serveth  few; 
He  serves  all  who  dares  be  true." 

Some  student  once  figured  out  that  in  the 
whole  United  States  there  was  one  college 
graduate  to  every  three  thousand  citizens. 
As  it  was  near  Commencement  time,  he 
wrote  a  stirring  article  for  the  college 
paper  enlarging  upon  the  mission  and 
responsibilities  of  those  who  were  about  to 
graduate — each  to  become  the  leader  of 
three  thousand!  The  spectacle  is  indeed 


Life  Worth  Living  115 

impressive.  Yet  there  is  no  disappoint- 
ment more  bitter  than  that  of  the  college 
graduate  who  goes  forth  from  alma  mater 
filled  with  the  idea  of  leading  three  thou- 
sand, and  who  expects  to  be  escorted  with 
banners  and  trumpets  to  that  commanding 
position.  No,  the  college  diploma  confers 
no  leadership,  and  the  three  thousand  citi- 
zens are  calmly  indifferent.  "Whosoever 
would  be  chief  among  you,  let  him  be  your 
servant. "  To  be  the  servant  of  three  thou- 
sand— that  is  something  to  stir  the  blood ! 
And  while  there  may  be  disappointments 
and  misfits,  the  opportunity  for  service  is 
sure  to  come.  ' '  Every  hand  is  wanted  in  the 
world  that  can  do  a  little  genuine,  sincere 
work. ' '  If  we  suppose  we  can  run  a  news- 
paper or  preach  sermons  when  the  world 
is  only  willing  that  we  shall  dig  ditches, 
we  had  better  accept  the  wise  old  world  's 
rating  and  see  at  least  that  its  ditches  are 
well  dug.  Plutarch  relates  that  "when 
Paedaretus  lost  his  election  for  one  of  the 
' three  hundred,'  he  went  away  'rejoicing 
that  there  were  three  hundred  better  men 
than  himself  found  in  the  city.'  " 

Has  some  one  in  mind  that  proselyting 
passion  for  goodness  which  strips  life  of  its 
leisure,  its  fun,  its  social  lubricant  ?  whose 


116       The  Things  That  Abide 

devotees  never  unbend,  who  urge  to  Puri- 
tanic strictness,  who  talk  audaciously  of 
remodeling  the  world,  who  throw  away 
every  good  thing  to  invade  the  Chinese 
empire  or  the  heart  of  Africa?  This  is 
not  self-sacrifice  —  primarily.  This  is 
youth — glorious,  buoyant,  believing,  cour- 
ageous youth!  Poor  would  the  world  be 
without  it.  It  is  often  spectacular.  It 
chooses  the  remote  under  the  impression 
that  the  remote  is  most  worth  while.  It 
must  learn  that  nothing  is  quite  so  hard, 
nor  quite  so  important,  as  to  do  the  little 
duty  well  and  faithfully,  at  home,  in  the 
quiet  round  of  life.  Soon  enough  it  will 
come  to  the  realization  that  in  a  world  far 
from  perfect  the  most  that  any  one  can  do 
is  very  little.  But  not  to  have  the  vision 
of  a  regenerated  humanity,  not  to  see  the 
City  of  God,  not  to  gaze  in  exalted  vision 
upon  the  fair  fields  and  lanes  of  Utopia, 
and  when  life  is  young  and  heartsome  and 
strong,  not  to  believe  that  we  can  make  the 
world  over — that  indeed  were  paralyzing 
to  the  good  we  might  have  done. 

''There's  but  one  thing  to  sing  about, 
And  poor's  the  song  that  does  without; 
And  many  a  song  would  not  live  long 
Were  it  not  for  the  theme  that  is  never  worked 
out." 


Life  Worth  Living  117 

Sometimes  a  state  of  absolute  justice  and 
absolute  freedom  appeals  to  us  as  the  ideal 
condition  of  life.  Every  man  would  have 
what  belonged  to  him.  He  would  be  free 
to  make  the  most  of  himself.  He  would 
have  opportunity  to  measure  himself 
against  his  fellows,  and  in  so  far  as  he  was 
stronger,  more  far-sighted,  more  patient, 
shrewder,  wiser — in  short,  more  adaptable 
— he  would  succeed.  Those  who  were  fee- 
ble, or  shortsighted,  or  disabled,  or  dis- 
eased, would  have  their  measure  of  oppor- 
tunity, be  finally  crowded  to  the  outer  rim, 
and  when  they  could  no  longer  hold  on 
would  drop  into  well-earned  oblivion.  In 
a  sense  we  have  been  moving  steadily  in 
this  direction.  The  century  just  past  threw 
off  many  of  the  shackles  which  impeded 
this  freedom  of  movement.  It  is  not  un- 
reasonable to  suppose  that  both  justice  and 
freedom  may  be  meted  out  with  larger 
liberality.  In  another  sense  we  are  travel- 
ing farther  and  farther  from  this  ideal 
every  year.  Man  free,  man  realizing  him- 
self, man  seeking  his  own  happiness,  would 
bring  us  at  last  to  an  orderly  world,  a  cold, 
insensible,  inhuman  Paradise.  It  is  broth- 
erhood which  forbids  it.  An  orderly  world 
is  desirable.  Freedom,  justice,  indepen- 


118      The  Things  That  Abide 

dence,  happiness,  self-realization,  are  desir- 
able, nay,  let  us  hope,  indispensable.  But 
take  out  the  helping  hand,  take  out  the 
love  that  can  go  down  into  the  deepest 
depths  and  out  to  the  farthest  rim  with 
healing  and  rescue,  take  out  the  spirit  of 
supreme  self-sacrifice — that  a  man  lay 
down  his  life  for  his  friends — and  life 
would  be  as  cheerless  as  the  awful  solitudes 
of  the  moon.  That  which  gives  life  a  mean- 
ing, that  clothes  it  with  beauty  and  worth- 
fulness,  that  sweetens  these  common  tasks, 
is  its  anchorage  in  the  larger  life  of  the 
vast  universe.  For  the  individual  this  is 
to  lose  the  strain,  the  pettiness,  the  jar  and 
discord  of  self-seeking;  to  find  the  repose, 
the  symmetry,  the  fusion  and  union  with 
all  that  is  aspiring  in  earth  or  heaven. 
One  life  truly  lived,  "under  the  aspect  of 
eternity,"  redeems  all  human  life,  and  in 
the  hubbub  of  the  day's  round,  with  its 
cares,  its  disappointments,  its  strugglings, 
its  triumphs,  restores  for  us  faith  in  the 
worthfulness  of  human  life — for  the  indi- 
vidual, for  the  race,  and  for  the  universe. 

" God's  in  his  heaven— 
All's  right  with   the  world  \" 


The   Christian   Argument 


The   Christian   Argument 

"For  the  Jews  require  a  sign,  and  the  Greeks 
seek  after  wisdom :  But  we  preach  Christ  crucified, 
unto  the  Jews  a  stumbling-block,  and  unto  the 
Greeks  foolishness;  but  unto  them  which  are 
called,  both  Jews  and  Greeks,  Christ  the  power  of 
God  and  the  wisdom  of  God. " 

IT  is  the  fortune  of  most  of  us  to  have 
inherited  the  Puritan  conscience.  We 
may  have  strayed  far  in  thought  and  deed, 
we  may  affect  the  more  yielding  standards 
of  this  cosmopolitan  world;  yet  it  is  not  the 
same  as  to  those  in  whose  blood  the  softer 
strains  have  long  flowed.  That  which  comes 
so  easy  to  many — little  deflections  from  the 
strict  line  of  rectitude,  different  standards 
for  man  and  woman,  good-natured  con- 
tempt of  Sabbath  strictness  and  week-day 
restraint,  unabashed  levity  in  the  presence 
of  the  deepest  experiences  of  the  soul — if 
we  attain  unto  these,  there  is  still  a  wrench 
to  even  the  least  of  those  whose  blood  car- 
ries a  single  Puritan  strain.  We  may  cut 
loose  from  every  Puritan  tradition,  we  may 
yield  obedience  to  what  we  conceive  a  larger 


122       The  Things  That  Abide 

truth,  yet  we  shall  do  it  with  a  sense  of 
pain  and  loss  not  soon  repaired. 

The  Puritan  lived  in  a  darkened  age, 
when  the  difference  between  good  and  evil 
was  but  faintly  discerned.  In  the  Puritan 
the  saving  elements  of  society  gathered 
themselves  together.  Puritanism  was  hard, 
sombre,  distrustful  of  mirth,  narrow-mind- 
ed. It  was  also  robust.  It  raised  up 
rectitude  and  righteousness  as  landmarks. 
It  associated  God,  conscience,  duty  with 
life.  The  life  was  hard-featured,  but  it 
was  pursued  in  sanity  and  soberness.  It 
was  downright  and  earnest,  and  however 
the  intellect  was  tripped  and  tricked  the 
life  was  transformed.  It  is  the  good  for- 
tune of  our  own  age,  by  virtue  of  this 
ancestry  and  this  life,  to  have  inherited  a 
body  of  men  and  women  sound  and  whole- 
some in  the  fundamental  sanities  of  life, 
religious  in  deep  and  true  ways,  full  of 
faith  and  hope  and  love.  Yet  with  all  this 
inheritance,  filled  with  the  fire  of  enthusi- 
asm and  purpose,  we  have  fallen  upon 
trying  times.  The  age  of  faith  has  given 
place  to  the  riotous  age  of  the  intellect. 
Whether  we  will  or  no  we  are  submerged 
in  an  atmosphere  of  inquiry,  of  investiga- 
tion, of  testing.  The  whole  boundless  uni- 


The  Christian  Argument       123 

verse  is  laid  open.  The  experience,  the  wis- 
dom, the  guiding-posts  of  the  past  are  at 
our  disposal;  but  we  are  expected  to  make 
the  universe  our  own  by  conquering  it 
afresh.  What  fascinating  outlooks!  No 
enthusiasm  is  so  buoyant,  none  more  thrill- 
ing, than  that  pure  passion  for  conquest 
which  invests  the  Knight  of  Scholarship, 
whether  his  quest  be  merely  some  intricacy 
of  grammar  or  the  evolution  of  a  race. 
And  no  matter  what  religious  experiences 
life  may  have  hitherto  yielded,  nor  what 
fortifications  theology  may  have  builded, 
it  is  inevitable  that  this  quest  should  em- 
brace those  fundamental  questions  as  to  the 
sanctions  of  morality,  the  meaning  of  duty, 
the  nature  of  religion,  the  existence  of  God, 
It  is  not  that  everything  held  sacred  will 
be  questioned:  that  is  no  new  experience. 
But  with  the  bewildering  rush  of  new 
impressions,  new  facts,  and  new  points  of 
view,  the  ground  will  seem  to  give  way 
beneath  the  feet.  All  about  you  men  will 
be  making  new  syntheses  of  human  life  and 
finding  no  place  in  them  for  the  emotions 
and  activities  of  religion.  It  would  be  easy 
to  exaggerate  the  pressure  of  this  transition 
time,  and  to  magnify  its  perils.  It  does  not 
come  to  everybody.  Some  lives  unfold  as 


124       The  Things  That  Abide 

the  flowers  do,  gradually,  imperceptibly, 
perfectly.  When  young  people  are  sud- 
denly struck  with  grave  doubt  in  the  pres- 
ence of  the  fundamental  problems  of 
existence,  it  were  easy  to  overestimate  the 
depth  and  importance  of  this  melancholia. 
Some  disturbance  is  incident  to  growth, 
and  growing  pains,  severe  though  they  may 
be,  need  not  alarm  us.  Yet  something  is 
evidently  awry  when  a  thoughtful  observer, 
looking  upon  our  community  life,  may  con- 
clude that  "the  majority  of  students  have 
no  use  for  religion." 

The  intellectual  problems  of  to-day  are 
not  the  same  as  in  St.  Paul's  time.  Yet 
the  analogy  is  striking.  Paul  lived  in  an 
age  in  some  respects  the  most  hopeless  in 
recorded  history.  The  disintegrating  influ- 
ences of  rapacity,  lust,  self-indulgence,  and 
malice  were  working  within  the  mighty 
empire  of  Rome.  The  sense  of  a  moral 
government  was  fading  from  the  mind  of 
Greek  and  Roman  alike.  Even  in  Jewry 
faith  had  given  place  to  formality.  The 
gods  no  longer  concerned  the  Greek;  yet 
there  were  left  those  who  reached  out  after 
the  larger  life,  and  in  philosophy,  in  art, 
in  science  were  seeking  for  self-realization 
through  stoic  wisdom.  The  Jew  could  not 


The  Christian  Argument       125 

so  easily  throw  off  his  vision  of  the  High 
and  Holy  One;  but  his  religious  fervor 
was  dimmed,  and  of  any  new  manifestation, 
like  Christianity,  he  demanded  some  un- 
mistakable sign  of  that  Divine  power  which 
invests  the  oracles  of  God.  To-day  it  is 
the  earnestness  of  men,  the  Puritan  strain, 
which  makes  problems  of  God,  conscience, 
duty.  It  is  a  sign  of  vitality  that  there 
are  among  us  so  many  Jews,  so  many 
Greeks — the  one  despairingly  demanding 
some  sign  from  the  unseen  world,  the  other 
seeking  wisdom. 

In  childhood  we  necessarily  live  upon 
authority.  Not  having  wisdom  of  our  own, 
we  must  obey  the  wisdom  of  parents,  teach- 
ers, and  rulers.  As  we  grow  in  knowledge 
much  of  this  authority  falls  away:  it  is 
never  wholly  shaken  off.  As  members  of 
families,  societies,  and  states,  our  will 
must  yield  in  varied  ways  to  the  larger  will. 
No  man  can  compass  the  whole  of  intel- 
lectual knowledge.  We  can  apply  certain 
tests  of  reason  and  comparison,  but  in  the 
end,  in  innumerable  cases,  we  willingly  and 
safely  rest  in  authority.  We  have  not  time 
ourselves  to  study  the  heavens,  but  we 
may  become  satisfied  of  the  veracity,  in- 
telligence, and  general  accuracy  of  those 


126       The  Things  That  Abide 

who  do  study  the  heavens  and  announce  its 
laws.  In  religious  matters,  we  inherit  the 
experiences  of  the  past,  and  especially  the 
intellectual  formulas  in  which  they  were 
cast.  In  some  form  or  other  these  expe- 
riences, together  with  the  intellectual 
explanations  of  them,  must  be  compared 
with  our  own  experiences  and  brought  to 
the  bar  of  our  own  reason. 

The  authority  in  religion  which  this 
generation  inherited  conceived  of  God  as 
far  removed  from  the  ordinary  phenomena 
of  the  world.  His  existence,  his  nature, 
his  decrees,  his  laws  and  punishments,  his 
plan  of  salvation  and  the  etiquette  of 
heaven  had  once  for  all  been  duly  set  forth 
by  men  especially  inspired  and  instructed, 
and  God  himself  had  retired  from  that 
direct  and  immediate  relation  he  had  once 
assumed  to  his  chosen  people.  Still,  by 
petition  and  process,  in  response  to  prayer 
and  service,  he  could  be  persuaded  to  in- 
terfere in  the  affairs  of  men:  using  the 
earthquake,  the  pestilence,  the  lightning  to 
do  his  signal  bidding,  averting  all  these  by 
special  favor ;  striking  down  the  wicked  by 
special  execution,  saving  the  righteous 
by  special  intervention.  Spiritual  men  in 
all  generations  have  pierced  these  walls  of 


The  Christian  Argument       127 

scholasticism  and  strayed  into  the  broad 
fields  and  sunshine  beyond.  No  generation 
has  so  little  excuse  as  our  own  for  being 
bound  by  this  mechanical  conception  of 
God;  yet  not  one  of  us,  I  suppose,  has 
wholly  escaped  the  limitations  of  this  point 
of  view. 

At  any  rate,  our  modern  Jew,  come  to 
college  halls,  finds  all  these  manifestations 
traced  to  secondary  causes:  all  nature 
bound  together  by  the  chain  of  law;  back 
of  earthquake  the  subterranean  disturb- 
ance; back  of  lightning  stroke  the  sur- 
charged atmosphere;  back  of  storm  and 
wind  the  unmistakable  barometric  condi- 
tions; every  manifestation  of  nature  and 
physical  life  the  effect  of  a  cause  which 
itself  is  but  another  effect  of  a  still  more 
primary  cause.  Back,  back  this  God  of 
authority  goes  until  dimly,  in  the  far  re- 
cesses of  the  beginnings,  where  science  has 
not  penetrated,  he  may  be  allowed  to  rest 
as  an  unknown  First  Cause.  Is  it  any  won- 
der that  our  Jew,  filled  with  anthropomor- 
phic images  of  God,  is  disturbed  and  doubt- 
ing. He  will  not  be  cheated  by  a  shadow. 
If  God  be  driven  out  of  all  known  phenom- 
ena and  superseded  by  this  intricate  inter- 
relation of  natural  laws,  how  can  it  be 


128       The  Things  That  Abide 

shown  that  he  is  within  the  shadowy  be- 
yond the  originator  and  controller  of  it  all  1 
Give  us  some  sign  of  his  power. 

Our  Greek,  on  the  other  hand,  frankly 
accepts  the  situation.  He  remembers  that 
the  lightning  stroke  does  not  turn  aside 
because  the  good  man  is  in  its  track.  When 
the  prayer  of  faith  seems  to  have  saved 
some  almost  shipwrecked  crew,  he  recalls 
other  tempest-tossed  ships  which  went 
down  for  all  their  prayers  and  tears.  The 
loss  of  that  immortal  hope  of  the  ages  may 
or  may  not  be  painful.  At  any  rate,  to  all 
intents  and  purposes,  the  universe  runs 
itself,  and  has  adapted  itself  out  of  nothing 
or  next  to  nothing.  Nevertheless  it  is  a 
wonderful  adaptation.  The  birds  do  not 
sing  less  sweetly  because  they  represent 
an  original  variation  from  an  elemental 
sensitiveness.  If  any  man  cares  to  call 
this  developing  principle  God,  well  and 
good.  But  the  Greek  will  free  himself  from 
religious  veiling  and  see  things  directly  in 
their  simple  relations  of  cause  and  effect. 
He  will  seek  wisdom,  the  knowledge  that 
makes  wise,  the  secrets  of  nature,  the  new 
synthesis  of  the  world.  Religion  is  foolish- 
ness, but  wisdom  may  well  call  for  the 
highest  devotion  of  man. 


The  Christian  Argument       129 

Strange  answer  that  Paul  gave  to  all 
that  questioning  and  indifference.  Stranger 
yet,  that  Christianity  has  no  other  answer 
to  the  not  less  eager,  perhaps  more  despair- 
ing questioning  of  to-day.  To  both  Jew 
and  Greek,  in  the  ancient  world  and  now, 
with  sublime  irrelevance,  Christianity 
preaches  Christ  crucified, — to  them  that 
are  called,  both  Jews  and  Greeks,  Christ 
the  power  of  God  and  the  wisdom  of  God. 

For  this  religion  which  the  despair,  or 
the  self-confidence,  of  youth  imagines  it  has 
no  use  for,  is  not  a  science  to  explore  the 
physical  world  in  regions  where  biology 
has  been  unable  to  enter ;  nor  a  philosophy 
which  harmonizes  the  gathered  knowledge 
of  the  world.  Undoubtedly  religion  is  in- 
timately connected  with  science  and  with 
philosophy.  Undoubtedly  it  must  accom- 
modate itself  to  the  language  of  science 
and  of  philosophy.  But  Religion  is  some- 
thing different  from  this.  Religion  does 
not  contradict  knowledge.  It  has  no  an- 
swer to  that  last  pitiful  question  of  First 
Cause.  Whatever  may  be  tested  and  tried 
by  weight  or  measurement  or  sense  experi- 
ence is  the  field  of  science.  Religion  has 
no  added  delicacy  of  touch  which  enables 
it  to  take  up  the  weights  and  measures  and 


130      The  Things  That  Abide 

microscopes  of  physical  science  and  reach 
more  accurate  results.  Nor  is  it  impelled 
to  this  search;  for  if  God  was  ever  any- 
where present  in  the  phenomena  of  life,  he 
must  be  always  and  everywhere  present — 
"in  whom  we  live  and  move  and  have  our 
being. ' ' 

Of  St.  Paul's  intellectual  greatness  and 
dialectical  skill  we  have  abundant  proof. 
When  he  entered  the  lists  to  answer  direct- 
ly and  philosophically  the  materialism  of 
the  Greek  and  the  skepticism  of  the  Jew, 
he  was  no  mean  debater.  To  him  Christian- 
ity satisfied  every  test  of  reason.  To  him, 
certainly,  it  lacked  none  of  those  signs  for 
which  the  Jew  might  reasonably  inquire. 
But  Paul  could  not  afford  to  risk  the  mes- 
sage of  Christianity  on  a  philosophical  or 
theological  solution  of  the  problems  which 
Greek  and  Jew  had  raised.  Logic  has  no 
power  to  touch  the  springs  of  life,  and  no 
real  doubt  was  ever  laid  by  an  appeal  to 
experiences  which  have  no  present  continu- 
ance. Paul  could  afford  to  seem  a  stum- 
bling-block to  the  Jew  and  foolishness  to 
the  Greek  because  he  saw  Christianity  in 
far  different  aspect.  It  could  not  be  appre- 
hended from  the  point  of  view  of  Jew  or 
Greek.  Christianity  was  something  differ- 


The  Christian  Argument       131 

ent  from  that  which  the  Greek  had  re- 
jected, something  different  from  that  which 
the  Jew  was  seeking  to  prove.  Christian- 
ity was  a  life,  a  principle  of  action,  a  rela- 
tion between  God  and  man.  If  he  could 
see  this  life  building  into  the  awful  serious- 
ness of  the  Jew,  working  in  and  moulding 
the  genuine  sincerity  and  artistic  quick- 
ness of  the  Greek,  he  need  not  trouble  him- 
self about  their  philosophy.  The  Jew's 
question  would  answer  itself.  The  power 
of  God  would  be  manifested  in  his  own  life. 
The  Greek  need  not  be  diverted  from  his 
noble  pursuit  of  wisdom.  His  cold  and 
cheerless  search  needed  but  the  touch  of 
faith,  the  unifying  purpose  of  the  larger 
life,  to  reach  it  up  till  the  Greek  himself 
should  see,  in  its  transfigured  light,  the 
wisdom  of  God. 

Philosophy  is  only  man 's  explanation  of 
things.  Christian  philosophy  is  only  a 
Christian  man's  explanation  of  things.  It 
is  colored  with  all  the  conceptions  of  the 
age  which  produces  it.  It  is  Nicene  or  anti- 
Nicene  according  to  the  intellectual  hered- 
ity, training,  and  associations  of  those  who 
proposed  it.  It  is  now  bedded  in  Ptolemaic 
astronomy,  now  in  Copernican.  In  the 
eighteenth  century  it  will  hold  to  separate 


132       The  Things  That  Abide 

and  special  creation;  in  the  nineteenth  it 
must  follow  the  great  evolutionary  cleav- 
age. The  readjustment  of  philosophy,  es- 
pecially of  religious  philosophy,  is  always 
painful.  It  was  so  in  the  sixteenth  century, 
it  will  be  so  in  the  twentieth.  But  inevi- 
table and  painful  though  it  may  be,  it  deals 
only  with  the  adventitious.  The  Gospel 
message  is  the  same  whether  philosophy  be 
Ptolemaic  or  Copernican,  fiat  or  evolution- 
ary. Christian  philosophy  is  always  chan- 
ging, and  must  always  change,  so  long  as 
anything  concerning  this  world  of  ours  re- 
mains to  be  discovered.  But  the  essence 
of  Christianity  is  unchangeable.  And  so 
St.  Paul  with  unerring  insight  ignores  the 
doubt  of  the  Jew  and  the  unbelief  of  the 
Greek,  and  lays  down  the  Christian  pro- 
gramme. Christianity  does  not  assume  to 
solve  any  of  the  problems  which  are  as  old 
as  human  life,  except  as  the  unfolding 
nature  grows  into  the  unity,  the  harmony, 
the  beauty  of  the  divine  life.  The  Bible 
never  anywhere  argues  the  existence  of 
God;  Christianity  never  anywhere  presup- 
poses assent  to  a  theology.  ''Follow  me," 
"Come  unto  me,"  "Take  up  your  cross" 
— these  were  Christ's  test.  What  gives 
Christianity  its  vitality,  and  what  makes 


The  Christian  Argument       133 

Christian  the  largest  word  in  the  language, 
is  this  fundamental  call  to  life  and  service. 
We  do  not  yield  allegiance  to  Jesus  be- 
cause of  his  authoritative  manner  of  speech. 
This  were  to  confuse  effect  with  cause.  He 
spoke  with  sublime  authority  because  life 
had  yielded  to  him  its  everlasting  meaning. 
He  who  searches  the  Gospels  for  proof- 
texts  may  find  support  for  almost  any  sys- 
tem. He  who  sees  nothing  more  in  his 
Bible  than  historical  data  and  an  ethical 
syllabus  has  missed  its  import.  Jesus'  mes- 
sage was  bound  up  with  his  personality — • 
because  the  life  was  the  message.  He 
asserted  the  sonship.  He  dared  to  reach 
up  and  claim  the  high  prerogative  of  Son 
of  God.  His  nature  found  no  repulse,  he 
stood  on  this  height  one  with  God  in  pur- 
pose and  fellowship.  What  he  said  seemed 
of  little  account;  it  never  occurred  to  him 
to  write  it  down.  He  put  himself  at  the 
head  of  no  movement.  He  did  not  seek  the 
great  centers  that  from  their  vantage- 
ground  his  power  and  influence  might  be 
augmented.  What  he  did  was  mainly  inci- 
dental. As  he  went  about  he  did  the  god- 
like things — the  simple  deeds  of  service — 
and  spoke  the  discourse  of  the  spirit. 
Twelve  men  became  his  companions,  and 


134       The  Things  That  Abide 

upon  them  he  poured  out  the  wealth  of  his 
nature.  To  them  he  opened  the  secrets  of 
life  and  called  them  to  his  height.  One 
failed  him;  the  others  responded  in  some 
fashion  to  that  inspiring  touch.  Jesus 
looked  to  see  the  whole  world  transformed 
and  human  life  everywhere  made  divine 
through  this  power  of  love  and  service.  In 
a  way  the  world  has  responded.  In  fair 
and  generous  measure  a  multitude  of  lives 
have  attained  the  sonship  to  which  Jesus 
called  them.  Yet  now,  after  the  lapse  of 
nearly  nineteen  hundred  years,  when  we 
measure  any  of  these  against  the  command- 
ing figure  of  Christ,  we  do  not  need  any 
one  to  tell  us  why  Jesus  occupies  a  unique 
and  undisputed  place  in  the  world. 

Paul  preached  Christ  crucified  because 
he  must  turn  men's  thoughts  from  phil- 
osophy to  life.  Here  was  One  who  shared 
our  common  life  in  common  ways  of  love 
and  service.  Yet  in  that  life  and  service 
was  that  which  the  Jew  so  despairingly 
sought — not  some  ability  to  wreck  the  or- 
dinary laws  and  processes  of  nature,  which 
the  Jew  of  Galilee  and  of  Stanford  seems 
to  think  would  be  proof  of  Divinity;  not 
some  opening  of  the  heavens  which  should 
disclose  a  superhuman  God  and  angels  on 


The  Christian  Argument       135 

the  other  side  of  the  sky;  not  the  subtle- 
ties of  an  ethical  philosophy  which  arrives 
by  slow  gradations  at  the  greatest  good  of 
the  greatest  number — but  that  larger  unity 
and  purpose  which  reaches  up  to  the 
Fatherhood  of  God  through  the  brother- 
hood of  man.  To  the  Greek  who  cannot 
believe  in  God  because  he  knows  so  much, 
because  he  sees  that  everything  which  men 
call  God  can  be  resolved  into  a  manifesta- 
tion of  force,  because  the  gods  are  mere 
imaginings  to  account  for  what  cannot  be 
understood,  Paul  is  content  to  preach  this 
foolishness  of  one  who  in  life  and  in  death 
freely  gave  himself  a  ransom  for  many; 
not  caring  what  name  he  might  be  called, 
if  love,  and  penitence,  and  forgiveness,  and 
the  joy  of  service  bring  its  regenerating 
touch;  yet  confident  that,  in  the  end,  it 
would  spell  out,  to  the  Greek  himself,  the 
wisdom  and  the  love  of  God. 

Light  and  immortality  have  been  brought 
to  light  through  the  Gospel.  Immortality 
came  to  light,  not  because  Jesus  died  and 
then  returned  from  out  the  grave  to  resume 
the  old  familiar  comradeship.  Whatever 
that  mysterious  and  uplifting  experience 
which  came  to  the  disciples  after  Calvary 
Jesus  did  not  take  up  again  the  daily  round 


136       The  Things  That  Abide 

of  life,  nor  did  he  discourse  of  what  he  had 
found  beyond  the  veil.  The  earthly  life 
was  cut  off  forever,  and  no  curious  word 
was  spoken  of  what  goes  on  in  that  silent 
land.  Not  so  could  immortality  be  brought 
to  light.  We  cannot  live,  nor  behold  the 
light  of  immortality  through  the  record  of 
any  past  event.  Life  is  an  experience  of 
our  own.  We  live  it  or  we  do  not  have  it. 
Immortality  came  to  light  in  Jesus  through 
that  unerring  spiritual  instinct,  that  in- 
sight into  the  eternity  of  life,  which  is 
shared  to  us  through  his  winsome  and  over- 
mastering personality.  He  saw  life  in  its 
largest  meaning,  its  inter-relation  with  the 
unending  purpose  of  God.  Every  relation 
of  this  life  had  its  immortal  aspect.  He 
lived  the  immortal  life,  and  death  could  be 
only  an  incident,  however  profound  or  sig- 
nificant. 

"God  giveth  and  forgiveth  without  the 
asking,"  just  as  the  rain  falls  alike  upon 
the  just  and  the  unjust.  Yet  in  a  very  true 
sense  there  can  be  no  receiving  un- 
less there  is  first  the  asking.  Asking  is 
the  consciousness  of  need,  the  necessary 
quality  of  receptiveness,  the  essential  con- 
dition of  receiving.  If  one  does  not  listen 
for  the  Divine  voice  he  surely  will  not  hear 


The  Christian  Argument       137 

it.  The  penalty  for  disuse  of  organ  or 
power  is  loss  of  organ  or  power.  Is  the 
religious  life  so  unreal  that  environment  is 
of  no  importance?  Nay,  environment  is  of 
the  greatest  importance.  It  is  well  enough 
to  feel  our  independence  of  services,  ordi- 
nances, formal  modes  of  worship  and  fel- 
lowship. Yet  certain  it  is  that  the  religious 
life,  unless  it  is  exercised,  attended  by  ade- 
quate expression,  has  no  more  guarantee  of 
continuance  than  any  other  attribute. 
There  are  those  who  find  in  the  high  con- 
verse of  poetry,  in  quiet  communion  with 
the  great  thoughts  of  the  ages,  in  famili- 
arity with  the  intimate  retreats  and  secrets 
of  nature,  in  unselfish  pursuit  of  a  noble 
task,  this  stimulus  to  the  religious  life. 
Paltry  the  lot  of  any  who  has  not  felt  these 
high  ministrations.  Christianity  can  have 
no  quarrel  with  any  who  have  walked  and 
talked  with  God  and  called  him  by  some 
other  name.  There  are  those  to  whom  the 
Church  seems  but  the  outgrown  type  of  a 
higher  social  order.  One  hears  brave  words 
about  the  intellectual  necessity  of  break- 
ing away  from  the  church  whose  creed  you 
have  outrun,  of  the  common  honesty  of 
coming  out  and  showing  your  colors.  When 
the  great  historic  Church  becomes  nothing 


UNIVERSITY 

OF  / 


138       The  Things  That  Abide 

but  a  form  of  words,  an  intellectual 
formula,  you  may  well  heed  this  advice. 
But  what  if  back  of  all  intellectualisms 
there  is  the  stirring  and  fragrant  history 
of  a  great  organization  charged  with  the 
promulgation  of  the  Kingdom  of  God  and 
the  uplifting  of  Humanity — an  organiza- 
tion whose  traditions,  whose  treasured  ex- 
periences, whose  solemn  services  and  asso- 
ciations, whose  splendid  loyalty,  fit  it  to  be 
the  special  guardian  and  conservor  of  the 
religious  life!  Millions  of  men  have  lived, 
and  never  two  of  exactly  the  same  mind. 
Yet  millions  have  had  the  same  ideals  and 
have  looked  toward  the  same  heights.  How 
have  these  millions  worked  together  1  By 
keeping  their  eyes  on  the  heights.  It  is  no 
mark  of  greatness  to  isolate  one's  self  so 
completely  that  it  is  impossible  to  join 
hands  with  anybody.  Occasionally  a  great 
soul  is  so  far  in  advance  as  to  be  shrouded 
in  sorrowful  loneliness.  But  this  is  rarely 
so.  Most  solitary  souls  are  so  because  their 
eyes  are  withdrawn  from  the  heights  and 
cast  upon  the  imperfections  of  men  and 
organizations.  They  have  time  to  discover 
creed  differences,  and  to  forget  the  one- 
ness of  ideal  and  outlook.  There  is  joy  in 
heaven  over  one  sinner  that  repenteth. 


The  Christian  Argument       139 

Who  ever  heard  of  exaltation  among  the 
angels  over  one  righteous  man  turned  Pres- 
byterian, or  Unitarian,  or  Catholic,  or  made 
over  into  the  semblance  of  any  doctrinal 
system  ? 

"The  fruit  of  the  spirit  is  Love,  Joy, 
Peace,  Long-suffering,  Gentleness,  Good- 
ness, Faith,  Meekness,  Self-control :  against 
such  there  is  no  law." 

"Love  is  of  God;  and  every  one  that 
loveth  is  born  of  God,  and  knoweth  God. 
He  that  loveth  not  knoweth  not  God;  for 
God  is  Love." 


"As   Little   Children 


"As   Little   Children' 

"Then  were  there  brought  unto  him  little  chil- 
dren, that  he  should  put  his  hands  on  them  and 
pray:  and  the  disciples  rebuked  them.  But  Jesus 
said,  Suffer  little  children,  and  forbid  them  not, 
to  come  unto  me:  for  of  such  is  the  kingdom  of 
heaven. ' ' 

"And  Jesus  called  a  little  child  unto  him,  and 
set  him  in  the  midst  of  them,  and  said,  Verily  i 
say  unto  you,  except  ye  be  converted,  and  become 
as  little  children,  ye  shall  not  enter  into  the  king- 
dom of  heaven." 

CHRISTMAS  time  is  children's  time. 
\J  We  who  are  not  children  rejoice  that 
it  is  so.  Every  joy  in  our  own  life  takes 
a  richer  coloring  from  its  reflection  in  the 
happy  faces  of  little  children.  Even 
though  we  have  tasted  of  the  fruit  of  the 
tree  of  knowledge  and  found  it  bitter, 
though  disappointment  has  lost  us  the  zest 
of  life,  though  ambitions  have  been 
thwarted,  still  some  gladness  stirs  our 
hearts  as  we  let  it  all  go,  for  the  moment, 
and  enter  into  that  joyous,  fresh  world 
where  love  and  trust  abide  and  where  sor- 
didness  and  carking  care  may  not  come. 
Blessed  apotheosis  of  childhood !  Happy 


144      The  Things  That  Abide 

giving,  and  happier  sharing!  In  the  foot- 
steps of  a  little  child  we  may  find  our  way 
once  more  along  the  briar-grown  path  of 
the  affections.  Hearts  become  cold  may  be 
warmed  into  life,  and  aspirations  stifled  in 
our  strange,  grown-up  atmosphere,  it  may 
be,  shall  draw  breath  again.  In  the  wake 
of  childhood's  spontaneity  we  shall  take 
courage  to  break  through  conventional 
barriers  and  be  in  truth  "  kindly  affec- 
tioned  one  to  another";  and  through  such 
renewal  love  and  trust  shall  not  wholly 
perish  from  our  lives. 

But  Christmas  time  is  more  than  chil- 
dren's time.  It  is  more  than  the  celebra- 
tion of  the  birth  in  a  manger  of  one  who 
came  to  a  throne  in  the  uplifted  hearts  of 
Christendom.  It  is  more  than  a  brief  abdi- 
cation in  favor  of  children,  because  the 
King  was  once  a  child,  to  turn  back  again 
when  the  Christmas  days  are  over,  into  a 
world  outside  of  and  alien  to  the  child  life. 
In  the  Christmas  celebration  a  babe  is  ex- 
alted as  a  babe,  and  before  the  cradle  man- 
kind finds  itself  in  the  presence  of  a 
renewing  spirit. 

What  a  stretch  from  the  folded  life  of 
the  little  child  to  the  weather-beaten  struc- 
ture of  the  mature  life,  from  the  depen- 


"As  Little  Children "          145 

dent  trust  of  childhood  to  the  responsibility 
and  initiative  of  manhood,  from  the  ideal 
world  of  the  untainted  imagination  to  the 
grim  reality  of  the  battlefield !  It  is  a  hard 
thing  to  be  no  longer  young;  yet  youth  is 
forever  longing  to  become  a  man.  It  is  the 
heights  that  beckon  him  on,  and  with  eager- 
ness he  presses  forward  to  find  out,  to 
know,  to  invent,  to  experience  in  its  full- 
ness the  richness  and  the  splendor  of 
achievement.  Glorious  indeed  is  the  human 
life  divine  unfolding  toward  the  light, 
keyed  to  lofty  purpose.  How  the  glory 
dims  when  we  blindly  put  away  from  us 
the  unapproachable  grace  of  childlikeness ! 
Ah,  that  we  should  so  often  look  out  into 
the  world  and  into  our  own  hearts  and  see 
the  lofty  heights  obscured!  Somehow  the 
simplicity  and  the  trust  have  vanished; 
somehow  the  heart  has  hardened.  So  reck- 
lessly we  deal  with  our  wonderful  inheri- 
tance, so  insensibly  the  strength  and  beauty 
and  completeness  of  the  ideal  life  fade 
away,  that  we  will  not  admit  any  voli- 
tion. It  is  just  a  part  of  our  sophistication, 
we  insist,  just  the  normal  price  for  firm- 
ness of  texture,  wisdom,  the  necessary 
knowledge  of  good  and  evil,  the  substitu- 
tion of  realities  for  dreams.  The  youth  of 


146       The  Things  That  Abide 

promise  and  high  purpose  must  wake  up  at 
last  to  a  world  of  jarring  interests,  rival- 
ries, unequal  competitions.  The  things 
which  expanded  his  soul  and  fired  his  am- 
bitions are  not  the  prizes  for  which  men 
strive.  Their  pursuit  does  not  seem  to  offer 
any  secure  footing  in  a  practical  world.  In 
politics,  in  business,  in  social  life  the  ideal 
is  folded  carefully  away,  and  scheming 
shrewdness  and  conformity  fix  the  high- 
water  mark  of  practicability. 

In  religion  the  faded  metaphors  are  laid 
aside.  If  the  religious  impulse  persists 
God  is  sought  through  some  intellectual- 
emotional  experience;  but  when  God  has 
thus  been  found  we  need  to  be  persistently 
told  so,  lest  it  should  never  be  guessed 
through  any  effect  upon  conduct.  Or,  with 
the  attainment  of  erudition,  religion  is 
taken  out  of  the  innocent,  simple-minded- 
ness of  the  child  trust  and  given  over  to 
daring  speculation.  Far  out  beyond  the 
stars,  outside  the  unsubstantial  figments  of 
time  and  space,  in  the  ultimate  immensities, 
the  mind  tries  somehow  to  grasp  a  God  who 
is  the  Universal  Soul  of  things,  the  one 
only  essence,  of  which  we  are  a  part.  Or, 
in  our  blind  numbness  we  seek  him  in  some 
disordered  fancy  of  an  overstrained  ner- 


"As  Little  Children "          147 

vous  system.  We  think  to  apprehend  him 
through  some  abnormal  acuteness  of  the 
physical  senses,  and  try  to  satisfy  the  dull 
longing  of  an  unfed  heart  by  the  unex- 
plained marvels  of  sub-conscious  activity. 

And  so  we  find  the  problem  of  God  in- 
soluble. With  all  our  manifold  demonstra- 
tions the  question,  Does  God  exist?  is 
constantly  recurring.  The  prayer,  "0  God. 
if  there  be  a  God — save  my  soul,  if  I  have 
a  soul,"  is,  after  all,  about  as  high  as  the 
unaided  intellect  ever  reaches.  The  God  of 
our  thought  conception — Omnipotent,  Om- 
nipresent, Omniscient — makes  no  speech  in 
our  English  tongue,  we  do  not  meet  him 
in  the  street,  nor  can  we  see  anything  with 
these  eyes  of  ours  despite  our  utmost  strain- 
ing. 

"The  light  that  never  was  on  land  or 
sea"  is  the  constant  illumination  of  child- 
hood. Before  the  veil  is  lifted  we  all  live 
in  the  glowing  land  of  promise  where 
everything  is  fair  and  beautiful.  The  light 
may  fade;  but  when  child  life  is  renewed 
in  the  home  something  of  the  old  enchant- 
ment instinctively  returns.  For  ourselves, 
we  may  aver,  the  glorious  vision  has  passed 
— for  us  the  prose  of  life,  the  commonplace, 
whether  it  pass  for  success  or  defeat — yet 


148       The  Things  That  Abide 

all  we  have  missed,  all  we  meant  to  become 
and  once  believed  we  should  attain — all  this 
shall  come  rushing  back  upon  us  as  some- 
how possible  in  our  children — if  only  youth 
could  be  kept !  If  only  we  could  guard  the 
children,  if  only  something  which  is  un- 
speakably precious  be  not  lost  in  the  pas- 
sage over  to  manhood,  the  world  shall  be 
transformed.  In  childhood  the  whole 
world  is  renewed.  Judge  any  man  by 
what  he  is  in  his  home  and  among  children. 
Moral  degradation  has  no  plainer  mark 
than  a  failure  to  respect  the  innocence  and 
the  trustfulness  of  childhood.  And  there  is 
no  surer  sign  of  the  pure  heart  than  in- 
stinctive reverence  for  childhood.  Chil- 
dren do  not  come  to  every  home;  but  it  is 
inconceivable  that  there  should  be  a  home 
so  selfish  as  not  to  want  child  life  in  it. 
' '  To  meet  eyes  which  trust  us  without  ques- 
tion, to  receive  caresses  which  are  not 
measured  by  our  worthiness  but  are  the 
spontaneous  fruit  of  a  love  which  seeks  no 
proof  of  our  merit,  cannot  be  a  light  matter 
to  any  man.  These  are  a  father's  guerdon 
and  repay  many  an  hour  of  patient  self- 
denial.  If  a  man  or  woman  finds  the  greed 
and  false  effort  of  his  or  her  world  are 
infecting  the  spirit  with  the  lowering  in- 


"As  Little  Children"         149 

fluenees  they  exert,  God  has  left  no  such 
restraining  power  in  a  sinful  world  as  the 
fear  to  injure  a  child  or  lose  its  love." 
Nothing  more  emphasizes  the  transitoriness 
and  artificiality  of  this  set-apart  life  of 
students,  in  barracks  and  boarding  clubs, 
than  the  absence  of  the  home  sanctities  and 
of  the  hallowing  presence  of  little  children. 
What  utter  loneliness  there  may  be  in  a 
crowd;  and  what  tempting  spirits  come  to 
a  house  thus  suddenly  swept  and  gar- 
nished! But  think  you  there  is  no  saving 
quality  in  the  memory  of  these  things  ?  He 
will  not  go  far  wrong  in  whose  heart  are 
enshrined  the  pure  affections  of  a  home 
kept  sweet  and  warm-hearted  by  the  child 
life  in  it. 

To  childhood  we  must  turn  back  for  the 
law  of  spiritual  growth.  Ignorance  does 
not  in  itself  prevent,  knowledge  does 
not  in  itself  help  or  hinder  spiritual 
growth :  to  reach  out  and  take  hold ;  to  put 
on;  to  earn  faith  by  being  faithful;  to 
experience  what  love  is  by  loving;  there 
is  no  other  way.  To  turn  from  plain, 
wholesome  living,  in  the  sunshine,  just 
doing  the  next  duty,  just  leading  the 
simple,  strenuous  life — to  turn .  from  this 
to  abstract  ratiocination,  or  to  painful 


150      The  Things  That  Abide 

groping  in  the  sub-conscious,  is  to  turn 
from  warmth  and  light  to  the  dank  cellar 
where  men  like  plants  shall  merely  spindle 
out  in  fantastic  and  unsubstantial  shapes. 
Some  strange  and  marvelous  harvest  there 
may  be,  the  rightful  spoil  of  erudition  and 
investigation,  but  not  here  the  meeting- 
place  of  earth  and  heaven. 

To  the  impatient  youth  hurrying  away 
from  childhood,  to  the  finally  disillusioned 
man,  the  trust  of  childhood  seems  a  blind 
trust,  just  a  shutting  of  the  eyes,  the  exhi- 
bition of  unlimited  credulity.  Nothing 
could  be  farther  from  the  truth.  There  is 
no  shutting  of  the  eyes  in  childhood.  The 
trust  of  childhood  is  the  undeceived  trust: 
"The  soft,  deep  heart  of  the  little  child 
that,  having  nothing,  asketh  for  all  things, 
that  hath  no  care,  no  distress,  no  solicitude, 
and  expecteth  only  love."  The  looking  up 
and  asking  is  natural.  The  trust  is  be- 
gotten by  nothing  but  the  receiving.  All 
the  sweet  trust  of  childhood  may  be  de- 
stroyed by  one  thoughtless  deception.  But 
so  long  as  the  child  can  say  My  Father,  and 
receive  the  answering  confidence,  so  long  as 
mother-love  beats  in  true  response  to  child 
need,  so  long  does  trust  remain  to  mold  the 
character  in  all  loveliness  and  excellence. 


*<As  Little  Children"          151 

Childhood  possesses  neither  knowledge 
nor  erudition.  Childhood  can  have  no 
sense  of  proportion  or  relation  among 
the  intricate  facts  of  the  universe.  But 
the  child-spirit  and  the  child-faith  are  the 
spirit  and  the  faith  which  preserve  the  sym- 
metry of  life  in  the  midst  of  all  the  dis- 
tractions and  disorders  of  the  world. 
Forever  the  relations  of  the  home  typify 
the  relation  of  man  to  all  that  is  kindred 
to  him  in  the  universe  of  God. 

Yet  we  know  that  the  God  and  Father  of 
us  all,  who  is  over  all,  and  through  all.  and 
in  us  all,  cannot  be  limited  by  time  and 
space.  The  very  highest  attributes  of  man 
— consciousness  and  personality — can  only 
faintly  symbolize  the  like  possession  of 
him  who  is  the  Sovereign  Ruler  of  the  Uni- 
verse. Creator  and  Preserver  of  Mankind. 
And  we  know  there  can  be  no  literal  truth 
in  giving  him  form  and  locality,  and  think- 
ing of  a  great  room  in  Heaven,  and  a 
throne,  and  all  of  us  gathered  around  it. 
Then  must  we  cease  to  think  of  God  as 
Father  and  we  as  children  to  be  gathered 
sometime  into  his  presence?  No;  here  is 
our  highest  thought  of  him.  Here,  by 
means  of  this  symbolism,  where  intellect 
and  reason  stand  at  bay,  we  pass  through 


152       The  Things  That  Abide 

to  ultimate  reality.  Just  here,  in  the 
simple,  trustful  attitude  of  the  little  child, 
just  here,  by  pressing  home  the  deepest 
relations  of  earth,  just  here,  in  this  sym- 
bolism, we  find  that  order  and  unity  and 
meaning,  that  harmony  and  beauty,  that 
unutterable  love  whereby  we  instinctively 
cry  Abba,  Father!  and  doubt  not  of  the 
response. 

What  is  the  strongest  characteristic  of 
the  wisest  man?  Not  his  craft,  not  his 
logic,  not  his  towering  knowledge.  It  is  his 
directness,  his  simplicity,  his  childlikeness. 
0  the  men  who  live  behind  masks,  to  whom 
diplomacy  and  duplicity  seem  so  great 
weapons,  who  flatter,  and  cajole,  and  con- 
trive! How  far  are  they  from  the  real 
heart  of  things,  from  real  strength,  from 
real  wisdom !  And  how,  after  all,  the  world 
loves  and  appreciates  outspokenness! 

And  so  the  lesson  is  and  the  sweet  mes- 
sage is,  that  we  can  become  as  little  chil- 
dren in  things  of  the  spirit.  Youth  can  be 
renewed  in  our  sluggish  blood.  The  hard- 
ened heart  may  be  softened.  The  zest  of 
life,  the  simplicity  and  trust,  these  were 
not  forever  lost  as  we  climbed  the  sordid 
years  this  side  the  eating  of  the  tree  of 
the  knowledge  of  good  and  evil.  Except 


"As  Little  Children"         153 

we  be  converted  and  become  as  little  chil- 
dren? Blessed,  thrice  blessed,  are  we  that 
we  can  become  as  little  children,  that  the 
tortuous  windings  may  be  unwound,  that 
the  simplicities  and  the  trust  are  real,  that 
the  spiritual  life  is  just  this  life  touched 
with  illumination,  that  something  that 
belongs  to  childhood  may  perennially 
freshen  our  days,  that  in  the  real  things  of 
life  we  may  never  grow  old. 

And  so  to  this  babe  in  the  manger  Hu- 
manity turns  and  sees  reflected  the  vision 
and  the  fullness  of  God.  The  Christmas 
vision  is  the  revelation  of  permanent  truth. 
The  things  eternally  truest  in  our  own 
lives  cannot  be  less  true  anywhere  in  the 
vast  eternity  of  God.  Jesus  took  little  chil- 
dren in  his  arms  and  blessed  them  and 
made  them  the  everlasting  type  of  disciple- 
ship.  How  long  a  perverse  world  stumbled 
over  the  plainest  of  truths !  But  childhood 
is  coming  to  its  own ;  its  benediction  is  that 
the  mood  of  despairing  doubt  and  home- 
lessness  shall  give  place  to  understanding 
trust  and  the  peace  of  the  reunited  home 
— not  less  real  that  it  passeth  all  under- 
standing. 


"Like   as  a   Father 


"Like   as   a   Father" 

"Like  as  a  father  pitieth  his  children,  so  the 
Lord  pitieth  them  that  fear  him." 

LIFE  is  our  adventure  into  the  un- 
known. It  is  the  supreme  quest;  and 
no  travelers'  tales  which  reach  us  can  dull 
the  keen  edge  of  our  own  experiences  or 
discoveries.  On  this  voyaging  we  can  go 
but  a  little  way  before  meeting  with  contra- 
dictions. We  shall  find  joy  and  sorrow, 
pleasure  and  pain,  triumphs  and  despairs, 
heights  and  depths.  In  this  encounter  with 
the  world  of  experience  we  are  not  mere 
inert  passengers.  It  is  a  real  encounter; 
and  how  we  take  it,  how  we  react  upon  it, 
how  we  direct  it,  is  of  vast  importance.  If 
we  were  passive  spectators,  and  if  the  spec- 
tacle would  be  the  same  whatever  our  efforts 
and  conduct,  if  a  blind  fate  were  driving 
us  toward  a  predetermined  end,  there  might 
be  interest  in  the  voyaging  and  curiosity 
about  the  end,  but  there  would  be  no  sus- 
tained enthusiasm  and  no  giving  of  thanks. 
But  if  there  is  a  port  at  which  we  shall 


158       The  Things  That  Abide 

arrive  by  virtue  of  our  own  effort  and 
striving  in  a  world  fundamentally  good,  a 
"far-off,  divine  event,  to  which  the  whole 
creation  moves,"  then  nothing  shall  sub- 
due the  courage  and  the  exhilaration 
with  which  we  turn  to  meet  whatever  be- 
fall us. 

Is  the  world  fundamentally  good,  or  bad  ? 
A  part  of  the  evidence  is  our  own  indi- 
vidual experience — what  happens  to  us;  a 
part  is  the  experience  of  the  race.  But 
there  is  no  final  answer  without  a  synthesis 
of  that  which  lies  behind  time  and  space 
and  every  outpost  of  the  human  mind. 
There  is  no  reflecting  mind  which  does  not 
try  to  make  this  synthesis,  to  construct, 
in  terms  of  experience,  a  symbol  of  that 
ultimate  reality  which  is  at  the  heart 
of  the  universe  and  which  we  have  called 
God. 

The  line  of  our  own  spiritual  descent  is 
through  the  race  which  has  given  to  the 
world  the  loftiest  conception  of  God  and  of 
the  destiny  of  man.  Yet  some  of  the  most 
terrible  conceptions  of  God  are  found  in 
the  Bible.  Those  which  reflect  merely  a 
rudimentary  stage  of  civilization,  in  which 
cunning  and  cruelty  suggest  no  inconsis- 
tency, we  need  not  dwell  upon.  Even  in 


"Like  as  a  Father''          159 

them  the  spiritual  genius  of  the  Hebrew 
people  is  not  wholly  wanting.  God  is 
always  the  defender  of  his  chosen  people. 
Against  their  enemies  he  will  move  with 
swift  and  terrible  fury.  For  the  chosen 
nation  there  is  deliverance  and  exaltation, 
yet  through  the  discipline  of  trial  and 
humiliation.  Even  when  the  passion  for 
righteousness  has  become  dominant  he  is 
the  great  and  terrible  God,  smiting  wicked- 
ness, tearing  down  idols,  overturning  king- 
doms with  his  breath.  Prophetic  language 
is  symbolic  and  figurative.  Nevertheless 
prophecy  is  a  reflective  interpretation  of 
the  world  of  experience  thrown  against  the 
unconquerable  ideal  of  the  Hebrew  race. 

But  while  the  prophets  cling  to  their 
great  ideal  and  transmit  it  unimpaired,  the 
heritage  of  all  succeeding  peoples,  the 
Hebrew  race  can  grasp  it  only  fitfully  and 
is  again  and  again  overwhelmed  by  the 
insistent  contradictions  of  experience.  It 
finds  a  world  of  warring  forces,  a  world  of 
bitter  contrasts,  a  world  of  suffering.  The 
wicked  prosper,  the  innocent  suffer,  right- 
eousness must  stand  aside.  The  days  of  a 


"  Never  morning  wore 
To  evening,  but  some  heart  did  break." 


160       The  Things  That  Abide 

What  kind  of  a  world  is  this, — the  world 
cf  breaking  hearts'?  In  a  moment,  in  the 
twinkling  of  an  eye,  the  lightning  stroke 
may  come  and  leave  behind  only  the  long, 
long  ache  of  bereavement. 

"Why  is  light  given  to  a  man  whose  way  is  hid, 
And  whom  God  hath  hedged  in? 
I  am  not  at  ease,  neither  am  I  quiet, 
Neither  have  I  rest:  but  trouble  cometh. " 

Is  it  a  good  world  which  can  write  such 
a  commentary  on  human  life  ? 

From  this  prison-house  of  despair  the 
Hebrew  mind  could  climb  to  one  unassail- 
able height.  God  might  be  angry  or  jealous 
or  unpropitiated ;  evil  passions  and  sorrow 
might  for  a  time  hold  sway.  But  this  was 
no  eternal  order :  the  Vindicator  would  ap- 
pear. Restoration  was  merely  delayed ;  the 
Chosen  People  would  yet  be  exalted. 
Modern  pessimism  has  sunk  into  a  deeper 
despair.  There  is  no  Vindicator.  Nature 
has  her  genial  moods,  her  lovable  aspects. 
But  she  is  the  stern  and  unbending  law  of 
sequence;  she  vindicates  only  her  own 
order.  The  reality  outside  of  man  does  not 
regard  man;  it  is  utterly  indifferent  to 
him.  Nature  is  beneficent  if  we  go  her 
way;  within  that  range  we  may  be  light- 
hearted  and  love  life  and  feel  it  good.  But 


"Like  as  a  Father "  161 

if  we  oppose  her  she  strikes  without  fear 
and  without  remorse.,  Nothing  interferes 
with  nature,  for  there  is  nothing  to  inter- 
fere with  immutable  law.  God — that  is,  the 
mechanism  of  the  universe — is  concerned 
with  his  own  affairs.  ' '  Nature  red  in  tooth 
and  claw  with  ravine,"  "the  great  glad 
earth — glad  as  if  no  child  had  ever  died" 
— this  is  our  outward  environment.  And  if 
one  flees  in  terror  from  this  aspect  of  the 
outer  world  to  seek  renewal  of  life  in  the 
commonwealth  of  hearts,  one  is  met  by 
the  no  less  terrible  isolation  of  the  individ- 
ual. We  meet  and  touch  in  the  surface 
things,  and  in  the  depths  of  the  soul  are  a 
million  miles  apart.  How  much  there  is 
we  cannot  share !  How  much  there  is,  both 
in  our  joy  and  our  sorrow,  of  which  the 
world  neither  knows  nor  cares! 

"She  came  to  us  in  storm  and  snow— 

The  little  one  we  held  so  dear— 
And  all  the  world  was  full  of  woe, 

And  war  and  famine  plagued  the  year; 
And     ships     were     wrecked,     and     fields     were 

drowned, 

And  thousands  died  for  lack  of  bread; 
In  such  a  troubled  time  we  found 

That  sweet  mouth  to  be  kissed  and  fed. 

"But  oh,  we  were  a  happy  pair, 

Through  all  the  war  and  want  and  woe; 
Though  not  a  heart  appeared  to  care, 
And  no  one  even  seemed  to  know. 


162       The  Things  That  Abide 

"She  left  us  in  the  blithe  increase 

Of  glowing  fruit  and  ripening  corn, 
When  all  the  nations  were  at  peace, 

And  plenty  held  a  brimming  horn— 
When  we  at  last  were  well  to  do, 

And  life  was  sweet  and  earth  was  gay; 
In  that  glad  time  of  cloudless  blue 

Our  little  darling  passed  away. 

"And  oh,  we  were  a  wretched  pair 

In  all  the  gladness  and  the  glow; 
And  not  a  heart  appeared  to  care, 
And  no  one  even  seemed  to  know." 

I  know  there  is  a  philosophical  reaction 
from  the  despair  which  seems  to  follow  the 
pessimistic  view  of  the  universe.  Things 
are  not  so  bad  after  all.  There  is  a 
bright  side,  and  one  may  train  himself 
to  look  mainly  on  that.  In  the  allotted 
threescore  and  ten  years  much  may  be 
achieved.  No  matter  if  it  makes  no  differ- 
ence a  cycle  or  a  million  years  hence:  we 
take  life  as  we  find  it,  with  a  fair  chance 
at  its  prizes.  Nature  may  be  coaxed  and 
driven  to  do  our  bidding,  if  only  we  try 
patiently  to  learn  her  ways;  the  fellowship 
and  emulation  of  kindred  minds  will  sus- 
tain and  cheer  us  along  the  toilsome  ascent. 
There  will  be  pain  and  pleasure,  but  in 
seventy  years  we  may  hope  to  triumph  over 
the  pain  and  achieve  contentment. 

Let  us  believe  indeed  that  all  this  is  pos- 
sible. But  is  it  in  this  mood  that  we  tune 


"Like  as  a  Father"  163 

our  Thanksgiving  anthem?  Because  there 
is  a  little  bending  of  the  scales  in  favor  of 
the  brighter  side  of  life?  because  in  the 
twelvemonth  past,  or  in  the  twelvemonth  to 
come,  our  gains  have  been,  or  promise  to 
be,  greater  than  our  losses? 

It  was  the  triumph  of  the  loftiest  spiri- 
tual insight  of  the  Hebrew  people  to  resolve 
these  grim  aspects  of  the  universe.  To 
them  God  was  lawgiver,  judge,  vindicator. 
But  their  passionate  faith  in  the  suprem- 
acy of  righteousness  led  them  on  to  the 
vision  of  God  as  a  Father — stern  indeed  he 
was  to  them,  unbending,  terribly  severe 
with  disobedience,  but  kindred  and  not 
alien.  He  cared  for  his  people.  "Like  as  a 
father  pitieth  his  children  so  the  Lord 
pitieth  them  that  fear  him." 

In  Jesus  this  feeling  of  the  Fatherhood 
of  God  had  a  new  and  marvelous  blossom- 
ing. What  Jesus  apprehended  amounted 
to  a  discovery  of  God,  a  revelation.  He 
was  no  inert  observer.  He  saw  the  sad 
contrasts.  He  felt  some  of  the  bitterness. 
In  the  quiet  years  at  the  carpenter's  bench, 
in  the  lonely  days  in  the  desert,  he  had 
his  doubts  and  struggles.  But  of  these  no 
trace  appears  when  he  stands  out  the  great 
Teacher  of  mankind.  He  adventured  his 


164       The  Things  That  Abide 

life  on  the  principle  that  it  is  a  good  world 
— his  Father 's  world.  He  talked  familiarly 
about  God,  and  yet  he  pretended  to  no 
occult  knowledge  of  Him.  He  had  no  ways 
of  knowing  Him  which  you  may  not  have. 
If  he  had  been  asked  to  prove  the  existence 
of  God  he  could  have  offered  no  better  log- 
ical demonstration  than  have  hundreds  of 
others,  and  probably  with  no  better  success 
in  convincing  the  unwilling  mind.  What 
he  discovered  was  a  synthesis  of  life  which 
explained  it,  which  resolved  its  contradic- 
tory elements,  which  brought  order  out  of 
chaos,  which  enthroned  Love  in  the 
heavens.  This  synthesis  was  not  a  theory 
spun  out  in  his  head.  He  beheld  the  lilies 
of  the  field.  He  saw  affection  working  in 
the  world.  He  saw  what  became  of  despair 
in  the  crucible  of  faith  and  hope  and  love. 
He  could  see  the  laughter  coming  through 
the  tears.  He  could  see  the  joy  encompass- 
ing the  sorrow.  Love  will  heal  the  wounds ; 
love  will  transform  the  evil.  It  is  so  be- 
cause it  is  God 's  world,  and  this  is  His 
expression  of  Himself. 

How  did  Jesus  demonstrate  this  synthe- 
sis? Only  by  living  it  and  giving  his  life 
for  it.  It  will  never  be  demonstrated  in 
any  other  way.  We  who  live  it  so  im- 


"Like  as  a  Father "  165 

perfectly  may  see  glimpses  of  what  it  is  in 
its  perfectness.  It  is  a  good  world  because 
human  affections  are  the  glow  of  it.  It 
is  a  good  world  because  evil,  no  matter  how 
prevalent,  is  alien:  in  the  scale  of  values 
evil  weighs  nothing.  It  is  a  good  world 
because  character  is  supreme.  No  one  may 
doubt  that  the  spiritual  is  higher  than  the 
animal,  or  that  unselfishness  is  more  comely 
than  self-interest.  "Never  morning  wore 
to  evening,  but  some  heart  did  break" — 
but  it  is  not  the  broken  heart  that  is  sig- 
nificant. It  is  the  healing  that  is  signifi- 
cant— the  healing  that  goes  out  from  a  good 
world.  ' '  To  bind  up  the  broken-hearted ' ' ! 
0  the  mystery  of  pain — but  the  greater 
mystery  of  its  absorption!  It  is  not  Time 
that  heals :  it  is  the  good  world — its  warmth 
and  tenderness,  its  abundant  life  that  f ail- 
eth  not.  To  the  woman  bearing  the  dead 
babe  Buddha  could  only  say, ' '  Look  around 
you  and  see  how  many  others  suffer  a  like 
affliction."  But  healing  comes  only  as  one 
enters  into  the  gladness  which,  after  all, 
fills  the  world.  It  is  not  cruelty  or  indiffer- 
ence that  "the  great,  glad  earth  is  glad  as 
if  no  child  had  ever  died. "  It  is  the  pledge 
that  after  all,  and  in  spite  of  all,  life  is 
livable  and  joyous.  The  sunshine  will  fall 


166       The  Things  That  Abide 

upon  us  till  we  cannot  but  heed.  When 
the  first  dull  feeling  of  surprise  has  worn 
away  we  shall  rejoice  that  "the  great,  glad 
earth"  could  not  be  changed  or  swerved 
aside  by  our  little  griefs.  Because  it  is  a 
world  loving  and  fine  the  clouds  will  melt 
away.  The  good  world's  elixir  is  its  un- 
bounded cheerfulness,  the  bursting  of  leaf 
and  flower,  the  flooding  sunshine,  the  im- 
perturbable calm  of  loving  hearts. 

"I  too  have  come  through  wintry  terrors,— yea, 
Through  tempest  and  through  cataclysm  of  soul 
Have  come,  and  am  delivered.     Me  the  Spring, 
Me  also,  dimly  with  new  life  hath  touched, 
And  with  regenerate  hope,  the  salt  of  life; 
And  I  would  dedicate  these  thankful  tears 
To  whatsoever  Power  beneficent, 
Veiled  though  his  countenance,  undivulged  his 

thought, 

Hath  led  me  from  the  haunted  darkness  forth 
Into  the  gracious  air  and  vernal  morn, 
And  suffers  me  to  know  my  spirit  a  note 
Of  this  great  chorus,  one  with  bird  and  stream 
And    voiceful    mountain, — nay,    a    string,    how 

jarred 

And  all  but  broken!    of  that  lyre  of  life 
Whereon  himself,  the  master  harp-player, 
Eesolving  all  its  mortal  dissonance 
To  one  immortal  and  most  perfect  strain, 
Harps   without    pause,    building   with    song    the 

world. " 

It  is  this  world  of  song  that  we  are  try- 
ing to  put  into  our  Thanksgiving  this  morn- 
ing. Shall  we  do  it,  for  our  country,  by 
picking  out  her  triumphs  and  not  remem- 


"Like  as  a  Father"  167 

bering  her  defeats?  for  ourselves,  by  dwell- 
ing only  on  the  pleasure  and  forgetting  the 
pain?  Or  shall  we  rise  to  some  heroic 
height  and  offer  thanksgiving  for  all  that 
has  befallen  us,  the  evil  and  the  good,  the 
joy  and  the  sorrow  ?  Rather  let  us  be  thank- 
ful that  joy  remaineth :  not  that  there  is  an 
alternation  of  joy  and  sorrow,  but  that  joy 
is  permanent.  After  pain  there  cometh 
joy — not  in  alternation,  but  as  the  unsup- 
pressible  reality. 

The  isolation  is  only  seeming.  A  world 
in  which  goodness  may  root  and  send  forth 
its  undying  fragrance,  in  which  the  cup 
of  cold  water  is  always  passing,  out  of 
which  the  barbarian  and  the  brute  are 
dying,  is  not  a  homeless  world.  It  is  our 
Father 's  house.  If  we  do  not  talk  so  freely 
and  frankly  about  it  as  Jesus  did  perhaps 
it  is  because  the  beautiful  symbolism  has 
been  covered  over  by  an  unlovely  literalism. 
It  is  days  like  this  when  we  break  through 
the  crust.  In  the  warmth  of  human  affec- 
tions, in  the  joy  of  that  forward  look  which 
lifts  us  above  every  contradiction,  we  may 
speak  the  gratitude  of  children  over  whom 
bends  both  the  seen  and  the  unseen  "like 
as  a  Father." 


The   Life   Eternal 


The   Life   Eternal 

' '  And  a  certain  ruler  asked  him,  saying,  Good 
Master,  what  shall  I  dp  to  inherit  eternal  life? 
And  Jesus  said  unto  him,  Why  callest  thou  me 
good?  None  is  good  save  one,  even  God.  Thou 
knowest  the  commandments:  Do  not  commit 
adultery,  Do  not  kill,  Do  not  steal,  Do  not  bear 
false  witness,  Honor  thy  father  and  mother.  And 
he  said,  All  these  things  have  I  observed  from  my 
youth  up.  And  Jesus  looking  upon  him  loved  him, 
and  said  unto  him,  One  thing  thou  lackest:  go 
sell  whatsoever  thou  hast,  and  give  to  the  poor, 
and  thou  shalt  have  treasure  in  heaven;  and  come, 
follow  me.  But  when  the  young  man  heard  the 
saying  he  went  away  sorrowful;  for  he  had  great 


THIS  young  ruler  did  not  come  to  Jesus 
because  he  lacked  anything.  His 
lines  had  fallen  in  pleasant  places.  He  had 
great  possessions.  He  kept  the  command- 
ments. There  was  in  his  life  the  thrill  of 
being  looked  up  to  and  obeyed;  he  could 
feel  that  he  was  meeting,  in  some  adequate 
way,  the  responsibilities  and  opportunities 
that  had  come  to  him.  Jesus  looking  upon 
him  loved  him. 

There  was  one  thing  that  troubled  him. 
This  pleasant,  satisfying  life  must  come  to 


172      The  Things  That  Abide 

an  end.  Somewhere  Death  stood  across  his 
path,  the  most  insistent  fact  in  life.  But 
beyond  death  there  was  the  possibility  of 
continued  life — life  restored,  eternal  life. 
How  could  that  eternal  life  be  assured? 
Let  the  conditions  be  made  out,  and  he 
believed  himself  ready  to  meet  whatever  of 
tithes,  of  almsgiving,  of  fastings  and 
prayer  they  might  imply.  There  was  no 
theological  legalism  he  would  not  under- 
take to  satisfy  if  only  there  could  be  assur- 
ance of  the  continued  life  of  unalloyed  rich- 
ness and  promise.  Jesus  was  a  Master  in 
Israel.  Would  he  have  aught  to  suggest, 
any  omitted  action  to  call  to  mind,  which 
when  performed,  would  render  that  future 
more  certain?  ''Good  Master,  what  must  I 
do  to  inherit  eternal  life?" 

When  the  answer  was  given  him  he 
turned  away  sorrowful.  If  Jesus  spoke 
wisely  he  had  put  his  finger  upon  some 
flaw  in  this  young  man's  thought  of  life. 
Possibly  the  young  man  looked  only  for  an 
assurance  that  he  had  done  all  that  the  law 
required,  and  that  his  parcel  of  eternal  life 
was  carefully  labeled  and  laid  away  to  be 
called  for  at  heaven's  gate.  At  any  rate, 
he  had  not  thought  of  any  remodeling  of 
this  life.  He  was  disappointed  not  to  re- 


The  Life  Eternal  173 

ceive  commendation  for  his  modest  self- 
abasement,  his  solicitous  care  to  leave  noth- 
ing undone.  His  pride  and  self-esteem 
were  hurt  by  a  reply  which  gave  so  little 
weight  to  an  upright  life,  to  the  punctil- 
ious attention  to  every  religious  command 
and  convention.  What  value  would  there 
be  to  a  life  continued,  made  eternal,  out  of 
which  had  been  taken  all  that  rendered  it 
attractive  ?  a  continuation  obtained  at  such 
cost  that  this  present  life  must  be  despised, 
counted  as  nothing,  given  up  ? 

How  completely  this  interpretation  of 
Jesus'  attitude  toward  this  present  world 
came  to  be  assumed  by  historic  Christian- 
ity; and  with  what  elaboration  of  detail 
and  emphasis  it  has  dwelt  upon  the  con- 
trast between  this  life  and  the  life  eternal. 
As  the  present  life  was  emptied,  as  it 
seemed  to  become  more  worthless,  the 
future  life  was  exalted.  To  the  theological 
generations  that  succeeded  it  seemed  that 
Jesus  merely  asked  this  young  ruler  to  give 
up  the  brief,  hurtful  pleasures  of  a  worldly 
life  for  the  sake  of  everlasting  joy  and 
felicity.  Nor  was  it  merely  the  prize  of 
eternal  life  which  urged  to  renunciation. 
Existence  could  not  cease.  Over  against 
Heaven  was  its  counterpart  Hell.  The  one 


174      The  Things  That  Abide 

was  to  be  bargained  for;  escape  from  the 
other  to  be  purchased.  Dangers  beset  the 
Christian  on  every  hand.  This  world  was 
the  devil's  world;  the  pleasures  of  this 
present  life  his  most  dangerous  weapons. 
Everything  of  earthly  value  must  be  re- 
nounced. The  life  eternal  was  as  different 
as  possible  from  this  present  life.  Here 
there  should  be  tears,  struggles,  weariness, 
renunciation ;  there  eternal  joy  and  felicity. 
Here  was  bitterness,  defeat,  disease,  death ; 
there  sweetness,  triumph,  untroubled  life. 
It  is  not  necessary  to  recall  all  the  ways 
in  which  the  imagination  of  man  has  played 
around  this  mystery  of  the  life  beyond 
death.  The  strange  theologies  which  have 
come  out  of  this  supposed  teaching  of  Jesus 
present  us  a  world  busy  with  the  desper- 
ateness,  the  despair,  of  doomed  men.  Men 
of  exalted  religious  emotion  fled  from  the 
natural  life  of  the  world  as  from  a  pest- 
house.  In  dens  and  caves,  in  lonely  hermit- 
ages, in  the  rigid  seclusion  and  rigid 
discipline  of  the  monastery  they  sought  to 
escape  an  evil  world,  wear  out  the  despised 
and  degraded  body,  and  win  the  prize  of 
eternal  life  held  out  beyond  the  grave.  Men 
of  philosophic  mind,  speculating  upon  the 
divine  nature,  worked  into  the  simple  mes- 


The  Life  Eternal  175 

sage  of  Jesus  the  intricate  subtleties  of 
Greek  metaphysics  and  superimposed  upon 
Christianity  the  lifeless  legalism  of  eccle- 
siasticism.  The  intellectual  characteristic 
of  this  age  of  faith  was  its  intimate  knowl- 
edge of  the  divine  mind.  It  explained  the 
cosmogony  of  Heaven;  it  codified  the 
Divine  decrees.  There  was  no  part  of  the 
plans  and  purposes  of  God  it  did  not  pro- 
fess to  understand.  Variance  enough  there 
was  upon  particular  points,  but  no  sect  or 
party  would  admit  that  theology  was  other 
than  an  exact  science.  And  if  it  did  not 
presume  to  so  complete  a  knowledge  of  the 
natural  world,  yet  it  turned  to  revelation 
as  equally  authoritative  wherever  the  word 
of  Scripture  touched  upon  physical  facts. 
There  was  indeed  another  aspect  to  this 
Age  of  Faith,  and  it  would  be  a  capital 
error  not  to  render  homage  to  the  lives  and 
achievements  which  honored  it  and  which 
have  permanently  enriched  mankind. 
There  were  hair-splitting  literalists  in 
plenty  who  darkened  counsel  and  fettered 
the  free  human  spirit,  who  shut  God  away 
from  man,  and  barred  approach  except 
through  the  complicated  etiquette  of  a  mon- 
archical establishment  and  in  the  abject 
abasement  of  a  court  servitor.  There  were 


176       The  Things  That  Abide 

perverted  ascetics  like  St.  Simeon  Stylites, 
relentlessly  destroying  that  which  he  was 
at  such  pains  to  preserve.  But  there  were 
also  men  of  tender  piety  and  resourceful 
courage,  heroic  spirits  like  St.  Francis  of 
Assisi,  St.  Vincent  de  Paul,  and  the  long 
succession  of  devoted  missionaries  who 
carried  the  cross  and  the  Christian  virtues 
into  every  dark  corner  of  the  earth. 

But  at  last,  in  the  fullness  of  time,  man- 
kind waked  from  this  imagery  of  the 
charnel  house,  from  prolonged  contempla- 
tion of  a  lost  world,  as  from  a  shuddering 
dream.  All  knowledge  had  been  shut  up 
in,  and  all  progress  barred  by,  the  word  of 
Scripture  and  the  tradition  of  philosophy. 
The  human  spirit  burst  these  barriers. 
After  long  wandering  among  the  illimit- 
able spaces  of  speculation  the  wearied  mind 
of  man  came  back  to  a  face-to-face  ac- 
quaintance with  the  next-to-hand  world. 
The  symbol  of  reality  shifted  from 
noumena  to  phenomena.  Out  of  the  facts 
of  every-day  life  and  observation,  out  of 
the  remains  of  the  past,  there  has  been 
wrought  out  the  story  of  a  world  whose 
richness,  whose  teeming  life,  whose  prob- 
lems and  possibilities  engage  the  eager  pur- 
suit, the  high  ambitions,  the  loyal  service 


The  Life  Eternal  177 

of  the  noblest  types  of  men.  Reluctantly 
at  first,  but  finally  and  unreservedly  reli- 
gion has  come  to  share  this  new  method  and 
spirit  and  its  view  of  the  dignity  and  the 
nobility  of  human  life.  It  is  God's  world, 
and  not  the  devil's.  The  -unnatural,  ex- 
aggerated emphasis  has  been  taken  off  the 
life  beyond  death.  The  richness,  variety, 
and  fascination  of  life  in  the  world,  and 
among  the  concerns  of  earth,  has  been  re- 
asserted and  rediscovered.  Trackless 
plains  and  inaccessible  mountains  have 
beckoned  to  the  adventurous  spirit  and 
fanned  to  white  heat  the  enthusiasm  for 
knowledge  and  discovery.  Laboratories 
and  libraries  have  given  absorbing  zest  to 
the  quietest  of  lives.  The  beautiful  in 
nature  and  in  art  has  renewed  its  appeal 
to  the  esthetic  side  of  life,  exalting  the 
imagination  and  purifying  the  emotions. 
Wholesome  child  life  has  had  its  renais- 
sance. Education  and  industrial  freedom 
have  brought  the  possibilities  of  largeness 
and  richness  of  life  to  every  door.  All  this 
religion  has  accepted,  is  helping  to  bring 
about,  and  through  it  all  is  working 
toward  moral  betterment.  Science  and 
religion  make  common  cause  for  the  mate- 
rial, social,  and  moral  progress  of  the 


178      The  Things  That  Abide 

world.  To  the  missionary  the  medicine- 
chest  is  as  indispensable  as  the  Bible. 
Problems  of  civic  reform  and  of  labor  and 
capital  are  of  vital  concern  not  less  to  reli- 
gion than  to  the  State. 

But  the  story  is  not  all  told.  When  the 
old  sharp  contrast  between  the  two  worlds 
had  been  destroyed,  when  something  like 
the  true  emphasis  had  been  restored  to  the 
life  that  now  is,  when  at  last  religion 
would  seem  to  be  entering  upon  its  undis- 
puted inheritance,  suddenly  it  is  found,  so 
far  as  a  great  body  of  trained  and  thought- 
ful workers  is  concerned,  that  the  sense  of 
reality  regarding  a  God  and  Father  and 
life  beyond  death  is  slipping  away. 

The  conception  of  a  life  that  goes  on 
after  all  that  we  know  of  life  has  fled  and 
turned  to  dust  came  at  first  only  in  dim 
and  vague  suggestion.  All  that  could  be 
grasped  of  it  was  shadowy  and  gloomy,  a 
thing  of  dread  and  not  desire.  Christian- 
ity did  not  bring  this  thought  into  the 
world ;  but  it  was  Christianity  that  lifted  it 
out  of  its  gloom  and  made  it  a  glad  cer- 
tainty in  the  lives  of  unnumbered  millions, 
that  has  taken  the  "sting  out  of  death  and 
robbed  the  grave  of  its  victory,  that  has 
enabled  ordinary  human  clay — such  as  we 


The  Life  Eternal  179 

are — to  face,  not  merely  with  courage,  but 
joyously,  weakness,  failure,  misunderstand- 
ing, misfortune,  pain,  and  death,  that  has 
rescued  old  age  from  despair  and  crowned 
it  with  the  halo  of  serene  trust.  Christian- 
ity exaggerated,  dogmatic  theology  grossly 
libeled,  a  fair  and  beautiful  world.  The 
exaggeration  has  been  corrected.  The 
world  has  been  redeemed  to  the  uses  and 
delights  of  man.  Is  this  enough  ?  Can  this 
make  up  in  the  lives  of  men  for  the  loss  of 
that  hope  which  has  been  of  such  incon- 
ceivable significance  in  the  redemption  and 
ennobling  of  human  life?  What  has  the 
religion  of  Jesus  to  say  to  this  recession  of 
the  other  world,  to  this  agnostic  stoicism 
within  the  limits  of  human  knowledge? 
Was  there  anything  in  the  message  of  Jesus 
which  transcends  these  limits?  Did  Jesus 
carry  our  meagre  knowledge  to  a  higher 
degree  of  certainty?  Did  he  know  more  of 
phenomena  than  we  do?  Was  there  some 
special  communicating  medium  whereby 
the  difficulties  of  comprehension  and  un- 
derstanding which  honestly  and  inex- 
tricably confuse  the  scientist  and  meta- 
physician were  surmounted  by  him? 

The  men  of  earlier  centuries  talked  learn- 
edly of  God's  ways  and  thoughts.     They 


180       The  Things  That  Abide 

never  doubted  the  possibility  of  knowing 
these  things.  They  were  in  part  revealed 
in  Scripture,  in  part  deduced  by  the  facul- 
ties of  the  human  mind,  and  reinforced 
from  time  to  time  by  observed  supernormal 
phenomena.  The  modern  man  of  scientific 
training  is  not  so  sure  of  his  knowledge. 
He  knows  some  phenomena.  He  knows  of 
some  force.  He  knows  of  some  succession 
of  events  which  seems  sometimes  like  intel- 
ligence and  plan.  He  knows  of  certain 
surviving  conventions  which  men  distin- 
guish as  right  and  wrong.  What  does  he 
know,  what  can  he  know,  of  any  such  being 
as  a  God  must  be  ?  How  can  individual  con- 
sciousness survive  the  dissolution  of  the 
brain,  and  if  it  may  do  so,  how  can  he 
know  it?  By  revelation  and  supernormal 
phenomena?  But  who  accredits  these? 
Much  that  God  was  formerly  said  to  do  is 
found  to  be  the  regular  and  ordinary  suc- 
cession of  events.  Much  must  be  hazarded 
on  the  outcome  of  a  difficult,  perhaps  in- 
soluble, historical  problem.  Much  that  the 
man  of  ecstatic  vision  has  felt  as  the  direct 
moving  of  God  upon  the  soul,  a  clearer 
psychology  unhesitatingly  pronounces  to 
be  subjective  states  of  human  consciousness 
brought  about  in  various  and  diverse  ways. 


The  Life  Eternal  181 

From  the  standpoint  of  one  who  is  building 
up  his  knowledge,  step  by  step,  through  all 
the  senses  and  the  logical  powers  which 
have  been  given  him,  is  it  inevitable  or 
natural  that  he  should  postulate  God  as 
the  explanation  of  any  yet  unassimilated 
facts?  Does  he  need  any  such  hypothesis? 
Is  there  any  evidence,  such  as  an  inquiring 
mind  may  test,  of  a  personal  consciousness 
persisting  beyond  the  grave?  He  may  be 
willing  to  retain  the  term  God  as  a  con- 
venient metaphor  to  sum  up  all  of  force 
and  mystery  there  is  in  the  universe :  pan- 
theism is  perhaps  more  expressive  than 
materialism.  But  he  wants  to  be  honest 
with  himself  and  acknowledge  how  little 
he  may  predicate  of  this  eternal  and  omni- 
present, but  unknowable,  energy. 

Is  this  a  man  of  straw?  Or  have  we 
touched  upon  the  insistent  attitude  toward 
which,  freed  from  theological  shackles,  the 
quiet  thinking  of  those  who  deal  with 
knowledge  at  first  hand  has  seemed  to  be 
tending?  Uncontroversial  for  the  most 
part,  veiled  still  in  religious  imagery,  try- 
ing to  hold  on  to  Christian  ethics  while 
letting  theology  go,  there  is  nothing  yet  to 
indicate  what  tremendous  bearing  the 
naked  possession  of  this  attitude  of  mind 


182      The  Things  That  Abide 

must  have  upon  the  fortunes  of  .mankind. 
Whatever  its  bearing,  if  true,  so  best,  af- 
firms the  scientific  spirit;  though  it  also 
denies,  with  positive  emphasis,  that  human 
life  is  thereby  emptied  of  its  nobility,  its 
high  endeavor,  its  incentive  to  moral  excel- 
lence. Birth,  growth,  maturity,  decay, 
death — the  cycle  of  all  that  we  know  as 
existence.  These  are  physical  processes — 
inevitable,  congenial,  fulfilling.  Growth 
and  maturity  are  wide  stretches.  They 
comprehend  the  play  of  affection,  the  spur 
of  ambition,  the  joy  of  comradeship,  the 
exultant  glow  of  achievement.  Even  over 
temporary  unsuccess  and  failure  Hope 
seldom  fails  to  spread  the  purple  glow  of 
future  achievement. 

"Has  man  no  second  life?— 
Pitch  this  one  high ! ' ' 

To  this  highest  height  of  stoicism,  to  this 
mountain  peak  of  conduct,  courageous  souls 
may  climb,  and  in  quietness,  if  without  en- 
thusiasm, meet  the  responsibilities  of  life, 
and  face  with  calmness  the  inevitable  end, 
sustained  by  the  modest  dream  of  joining 

"The  choir  invisible 
Of  those  immortal  dead  who  live  again 
In  minds  made  better  by  their  presence. ' ' 


The  Life  Eternal  183 

Stoicism  sits  lightly  upon  youth. 

"  'Something  in  the  sense  of  the  morning 
Lifts  the  heart  up  to  the  sun.' 
In  our  youth  we  may  be  pagan, 
God  is  many,  and  the  One 
Great  Supreme  will  wait  till  evening 
When  our  little  day  is  done: 
Something  in  the  sense  of  morning 
Lifts  the  heart  up  to  the  sun ! ' ' 

Stoicism  is  sublime  in  many  of  its 
aspects.  It  is  courageous.  It  is  better 
than  many  an  opposing  medley.  But  no 
such  chill,  though  grand,  conception  has 
swept  the  keys  of  the  human  heart  through 
the  ages.  Another  thought  has  brought 
peace  in  the  hour  of  sore  assailment,  an- 
other faith  has  given  the  tenderest  types  of 
the  human  spirit — the  thought  and  the 
faith  that  death  and  decay  are  not  of  the 
spirit. 

The  message  of  Jesus  was  so  simple,  so 
transparent,  so  straightforward  that  it  was 
at  once  and  persistently  misunderstood. 
Forever  the  attempt  has  been  to  garb  it  in 
the  language  of  mystery.  Caught  up  into 
the  realm  of  metaphysical  speculation,  it 
seemed  to  the  theological  mind  that  Jesus 
had  revealed  God  through  logical  processes 
and  logical  relations,  and  that  his  physical 
senses  had  apprehended  another  world  and 


184       The  Things  That  Abide 

the  God  who  presides  over  it  in  a  way  not 
open  to  other  men.  Whatever  be  the  fate 
of  our  supposed  knowledge  of  spiritual 
realities,  we  may  boldly  affirm  that  it  does 
not  stand  or  fall  by  these  criteria  of  the 
theologians.  Jesus  knew  less  of  phenom- 
ena than  you  or  I.  He  did  not  blaze  any 
new  way  through  metaphysical  difficulties ; 
he  did  not  even  concern  himself  with  these 
difficulties.  Jesus  looked  out  upon  human 
life  as  it  went  on  about  him  in  Galilee  and 
Jerusalem.  He  saw  the  passion  and  the 
tragedy,  the  heights  and  depths,  the  possi- 
bilities. Behind  it  all,  the  explanation  of 
all,  he  named  God.  The  age-long  ripening 
of  Jewish  thought  had  found  its  fruition 
in  this  conception.  But  he  went  beyond 
the  contradictory  notions  through  which 
his  race  had  struggled  and  by  which  it  was 
still  beset.  By  that  superlative  spiritual 
insight  which  accredits  itself,  by  that 
supreme  intuition  which  is  the  birthright 
of  the  creative  spirit,  he  pierced  the  mys- 
teries of  this  omnipresent  force,  this  cosmic 
order,  and  beheld  the  God  and  Father 
which  upholds  it  and  the  Love  which  is  its 
resolving,  binding  force.  Jesus  organized 
the  realities  of  the  life  of  the  spirit.  He 
saw  relations,  moral  values.  He  inter- 


The  Life  Eternal  185 

preted  the  spiritual  aspect  of  the  world. 
The  hopes,  the  aspirations,  the  longings, 
the  better  self — these  were  the  instruments 
of  the  Divine  unfolding,  of  that  Divine 
nature  which  supremely  expresses  itself  in 
Love.  Through  the  loving  heart,  through 
the  aspiring  soul,  through  obedience  to  the 
highest,  the  Divine  took  hold  of  the  human 
and  lifted  it  into  sonship. 

Because  Jesus  spoke  familiarly  of  God 
an  obtuse  theology  imagined  he  had  some 
occult  knowledge  we  cannot  possess.  Be- 
cause he  had  no  doubt,  now  or  anytime, 
here  or  anywhere,  of  the  presence  of  the 
living  God  it  was  assumed  that  his  assur- 
ance must  be  based  on  a  technical  knowl- 
edge of  existence  beyond  the  grave,  that 
there  had  been  revealed  to  him  through 
supernormal  processes  a  knowledge  of  that 
other  world  for  which  the  sufficient  testi- 
mony forever  afterward  is  his  recorded 
word. 

Jesus  was  sure  not  because  he  could  see 
through  the  tangle  of  metaphysics,  not 
because  he  could  solve  the  logical  diffi- 
culties of  the  problem  of  knowledge, 
not  because  he  could  comprehend  the 
mysteries  of  ganglion  cells  or  peep 
over  the  rim  of  an  inconceivably  distinct 


186       The  Things  That  Abide 

world.  These  were  not  the  problems  of  his 
time ;  they  did  not  trouble  him  at  all ;  they 
were  not  present  to  his  consciousness. 
Jesus  was  a  Hebrew  teacher.  He  was  born, 
and  he  lived,  in  an  atmosphere  surcharged 
with  the  idea  of  God.  He  never  doubted 
that  God  existed.  Jesus  had  the  sublime 
audacity,  characteristic  of  his  race,  to 
believe  that  God  could  speak  to  men — 
directly,  revealingly.  And  behind  that 
audacity  was  the  supremest  spiritual  in- 
sight the  world  has  ever  known.  For  him 
there  was  needed  no  unveiling  of  Flaming 
Bush,  of  Whirlwind  Voice,  of  Pillar  of 
Cloud.  He  did  not  require  for  his  own 
unclouded  vision  that  one  had  risen  from 
the  dead.  For  him  was 

"Earth  crammed  with   Heaven, 
And  every  common  bush  afire  with  God. " 

God  the  Father  the  explanation  of  the 
order  and  symmetry  and  eternal  call  to 
righteousness;  Sonship  the  explanation  of 
the  aspirations,  the  hopes,  the  upward 
striving  of  men;  Love  the  resolving,  unit- 
ing force.  Out  into  the  world  Jesus  flung 
this  conception.  The  mystery  of  life — all 
that  lies  beyond  mediate  and  immediate 
perception,  that  which  explains  it,  that 
which  gives  it  meaning,  that  which  expands 


The  Life  Eternal  187 

it — is  God;  not  revealing  himself  as  im- 
personal force,  unknowable  energy,  but  as 
our  Father,  touching  the  personal,  the 
upward-striving,  the  divine  in  us.  He  did 
not  pretend  to  any  sibylline  revelation. 
He  gave  no  details  of  an  existence  beyond 
the  grave  which  transcends  finite  expe- 
rience and  imagination.  To  him  life  was 
in  the  Father — abiding  as  the  Father 
abode.  He  had  sounded  the  depths  of  spir- 
itual being,  and  so  he  spoke  with  the  utmost 
confidence;  but  beyond  this  he  was  modest 
and  not  curious. 

Jesus  did  not  condemn  the  young  ruler 
because  he  thought  too  much  of  this  pres- 
ent world  and  not  enough  of  the  world  to 
come.  It  was  this  present  world  that  Jesus 
wanted  to  redeem.  The  tears  to  be 
quenched  were  here  and  now.  The  desert 
places  to  be  made  to  bloom  were  desert 
places  in  the  earth  under  our  feet.  The 
hope  to  be  put  into  hopeless  lives  was  for 
the  men  and  women  bent  upon  the  common 
task  of  living.  Jesus  opened  a  way  to 
transform  human  lives.  He  interpreted  to 
the  world  a  resolving  force  which  should 
redeem  human  life,  making  it  intelligent, 
free,  strenuous,  loving,  unfolding,  beauti- 
ful. Jesus  saw  the  hardness  and  the  cal- 


188       The  Things  That  Abide 

collating  selfishness  in  the  life  of  the  young 
ruler,  who  wanted  eternal  life  only  when 
this  life  had  failed  and  ceased  to  be.  Jesus 
offered  him  eternal  life  here  and  now — no 
affair  of  diplomatic  adjustment  between 
the  individual  and  God,  no  paid-up  policy 
in  exchange  for  few  or  many  pains  or  pen- 
ances here,  but  a  rebirth  of  the  soul,  an 
ennobled  purpose,  the  ecstasy  and  the  en- 
thusiasm of  self-forgetting  service,  the 
radiant  vision  of  the  pure  in  heart,  the 
building  up  ever  toward  and  into  a  life  of 
eternal  significance. 

In  spite  of  misunderstandings  and  fail- 
ures, in  spite  of  blindness,  perversity, 
insincerity,  weakness,  we  know  that 
Jesus  did  not  deceive  the  world.  We 
know  that  human  life  has  been  and 
can  be  raised  to  that  sonship  which  he  pro- 
claimed. We  know  that  the  peace  of  God 
shall  crown  him  who  orders  his  life  after 
the  pattern  of  Jesus  Christ.  We  know 
that  God  can  be  known,  and  that  the 
eternal  bond  of  union  with  him  can  be 
manifest  in  a  human  life.  "This  is  life 
eternal  that  they  might  know  thee  the 
only  true  God  and  Jesus  Christ  whom  thou 
hast  sent.'' 

Yet  the  question  must  recur,  "If  a  man 


The  Life  Eternal  189 

die  shall  he  live  again" — the  same  con- 
scious personality  that  inhabited  the  earth? 
When  life  is  at  the  full,  with  a  song  in  the 
heart,  how  dim  and  far  away  and  im- 
personal Death  seems.  But  nearing  the 
end,  or  overwhelmed  by  the  swift,  blinding 
stroke  that  carries  beyond  our  ken  the  well- 
beloved,  how  the  soul  must  try  to  pierce 
the  veil.  If  the  dead  live  again  they  have 
passed  out  of  our  sight :  is  there  any  break- 
ing through  the  incommunicable  medium 
of  mortality  ? 

Now  it  is  the  historical  fact  that  here 
and  there  and  at  special  times  this  medium 
has  been  broken  through,  that  the  God  who 
is  behind  it  all,  and  the  dead  who  have 
passed  through,  have  found  a  way  to  com- 
municate in  some  direct,  individual,  and 
even  verbal  fashion — it  is  this  asserted  fact 
on  which  the  faith  of  Christendom  has  been 
made  largely,  and  at  times  almost  wholly, 
to  rest.  For  millions  who  have  passed 
away  and  for  other  millions  who  are  now 
alive  this  demonstration  has  quieted  and 
satisfied  the  insistent  questioning  of  the 
soul.  And  it  may  be  said  without  hesita- 
tion that  the  negative  criticism  at  this 
point,  which  brought  such  doubt  and  con- 
fusion into  our  modern  world,  and  whose 


190      The  Things  That  Abide 

effects  are  so  evident  in  the  widely  preva- 
lent stoicism  everywhere  about  us,  has  spent 
its  force.  The  inquiry  now  is,  not  how 
much  modern  science  and  modern  criticism 
have  destroyed,  but  how  much  they  have 
saved — a  fact  which  presages  the  dawn  of 
a  new  constructive  era  in  the  history  of 
religion.  But  this  new  constructive  era 
will  be  conditioned,  and  largely  shaped,  by 
the  positive  results  of  modern  science  and 
modern  criticism.  It  will  not  be  content 
with  those  lower  forms  of  evidence  which 
satisfied  the  piety  of  the  past.  It  will  ap- 
proach the  mysteries  alike  of  life  and  of 
death  with  becoming  modesty,  and,  walled 
in  by  finite  limitations,  will  confess  often 
its  bafflement.  It  will  not  be  satisfied  to 
rest  its  hope  of  eternal  life  on  obscure  his- 
torical incidents;  nor  upon  those  inner 
states  which  seem  psychological  rather  than 
theological  mysteries ;  nor  upon  that  newer, 
persistent  evidence  of  the  supernormal 
which,  even  if  all  is  granted  that  is  claimed, 
is  so  meagre,  incoherent,  and  unilluminat- 
ive.  Toward  all  these  it  will  keep  an  open 
mind,  and  it  will  not  believe  that  the  last 
word  has  yet  been  spoken.  But  it  will  turn 
to  the  firmer  ground  of  the  immortal  qual- 
ity which  may  be  and  has  been  put  into 


The  Life  Eternal  191 

the  lives  of  men  and  women  on  the  earth, 
to  the  inner  witness  of  the  pure  heart  and 
the  unselfish  life,  to  the  life  and  the  mes- 
sage of  Jesus.  To  get  and  keep  that  sense 
of  a  God  and  Father  which  suffused  the 
life  of  Jesus,  is  to  win  the  immortal  height. 
The  sustaining  note  of  this  faith  will  be 
confidence  in  the  spiritual  integrity  of 
Jesus ;  and  it  is  through  this  conviction  that 
men  will  reach  up  to  the  God  who  "so 
loved  the  world  that  he  gave  his  only 
begotten  son  that  whosoever  believeth  on 
him  should  not  perish  but  have  everlasting 
life."  In  the  thought  and  the  plan  of 
Jesus  death  made  no  break.  Believing  in 
him  life  will  be  organized  on  his  plan. 
Because  he  lives  we  shall  live  also.  We 
shall  not  pretend  to  understand  just  what 
the  last  great  change  may  mean ;  but  more 
and  more  as  words  fail  and  images  become 
meaningless  we  shall  come  to  rest  back 
upon  the  simple,  tender  symbolism  of 
Jesus. 

This  eternal  life  which  shall  fill  the  soul ! 
— the  way  to  it  is  no  new  or  strange  way. 
By  prayer  and  service,  through  the  up- 
ward striving,  one  by  one  men  shall  win 
it — the  pure  heart,  the  clear  vision,  the 
joyful  assurance. 


192       The  Things  That  Abide 

"What  do  you  think  has  become  of  the  young  and 
old  men? 

And  what  do  you  think  has  become  of  the  women 
and  children? 

They  are  alive  and  well  somewhere. 

The  smallest  sprout  shows  there  is  really  no 
death, 

And  if  ever  there  was  it  led  forward  life,  and 
does  not  wait  at  the  end  to  arrest  it, 

And  ceas'd  the  moment  life  appeared. 

All  goes  onward  and  outward,  nothing  collapses, 

And  to  die  is  different  from  what  any  one  sup- 
posed, and  luckier." 

Out  of  the  theological  mind  of  the  past 
has  come  down  the  feeling  that  when  life 
is  ebbing  from  the  body  the  soul  also  is 
sick  unto  death.  As  with  hurried  feet  the 
physician  is  summoned  so  also  must  the 
priest  be  brought  to  minister  to  the  soul  in 
its  dire  extremity.  It  will  be  well  indeed, 
in  that  inevitable  hour,  if  our  friends  may 
sit  beside  us  in  cheerful  ministration.  But 
at  the  end  of  a  life  well  lived  the  soul  is 
not  sick.  Whether  Death  come  after  long 
vigils,  or  in  the  market  place,  or  in  dis- 
charge of  the  humblest  duty,  the  sincere 
man  faces  with  fearless  calm  whatever  is 
before  him.  If  life  is  pitched  high  enough 
— as  high  as  Jesus  believed  it  could  be — 
there  will  indeed  be  the  sorrow  of  parting, 
but  in  the  forward  look  Death  will  seem  as 
sweet  and  unobtrusive  as  sleep  to  tired 
eyes. 


The  Life  Eternal  193 

"Love  is  and  was  my  King  and  Lord 
And  will  be,  tho'  as  yet  I  keep 
Within  his  court  on  earth,  and  sleep 
Encompass  Jd  by  his  faithful  guard, 

"And  hear  at  times  a  sentinel 

Who  moves  about  from  place  to  place, 
And  whispers  to  the  worlds  of  space, 
In  the  deep  night,  that  all  is  well." 


D      I 


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